TAG awards 9 adtech companies with “Certified Against Malware” seal

The first set of certified companies have implemented the Trustworthy Accountability Group's anti-malware guidelines.

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The Trustworthy Accountablity Group (TAG) has named nine companies as the initial recipients of the “Certified Against Malware” seal. AppNexus, DataXu, Google, LKQD, OpenX, Publishers Clearing House, Rocket Fuel, Sovrn, and The Media Trust received the seal for implementing TAG’s anti-malware standards.

“You can’t stop fraud without stopping malware because the two are intertwined at nearly every level,” Mike Zaneis, CEO, Trustworthy Accountability Group, told MarTech Today. “Malware is the vehicle that allows fraudsters to create their bot networks and corrupt the digital advertising ecosystem, and today’s announcement is an important step in stopping those criminals and increasing confidence in our supply chain. We commend the first group of companies to receive these seals and look forward to expanding the ranks of certified companies even further over coming months.”

To qualify for TAG’s Certified Against Malware seal, companies must adhere to a set of guidelines based on their role in the supply chain, including TAG’s best practices for scanning malware released last year.

The nine companies are also partnering in TAG’s Malware Threat Sharing Hub, which provides a central resource for sharing and accessing near real-time information about malware attacks. Companies can access it to keep their own defense systems up to date, and TAG makes information from the Hub available to law enforcement agencies to assist in criminal prosecutions.

The industry group has also certified companies in its programs aimed at combating ad fraud and piracy.   Last month, TAG launched a tool to help keep ads from running on apps that distribute pirated content.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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