Suresh Ramasubramanian

Executive Profile

Suresh Ramasubramanian provides strategic vision and leadership on antispam and cybersecurity, and is currently Head, Antispam at IBM's LotusLive iNotes division.

Previous jobs include eight years as Head, Antispam at Outblaze, a Hong Kong based messaging provider with over 40 million users, whose messaging assets were acquired by IBM in April 2009.

Before that, Suresh worked on the Security and Abuse desk at Juno for a brief period of time, and then set up the anti-spam operations at BPL Innovision before joining Outblaze in 2001.

Suresh has been actively lobbying for realistic solutions at technological, legislative and policy levels to spam since 1998. He is coordinator of anti-spam NGO APCAUCE, as well being the Fellowships Chair and Vice Chair of the management committee for the APRICOT network operators conference. He has worked on a field research project on cybersecurity for developing countries for the ITU, in association with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, and has earlier written research papers on spam for the OECD Anti-Spam Toolkit and for UNDP/APDIP. He has given well-received talks and keynote speeches on spam around the world at conferences organized by the OECD and ITU, as well as at industry events such as MAAWG and APRICOT. He has been a regular media spokesman on these issues, being widely interviewed and quoted over the past several years in publications such as Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wired and PC Magazine. In recognition of his work against the growing spam problem, Businessweek magazine profiled him as one of 2002's top 25 e-business professionals.

Experience

IBM Corporation April 2009-Present Architect, Antispam and Compliance, SmartCloud iNotes'

Subsequent to the acquisition of Outblaze’s mail assets by IBM to form part of the IBM SmartCloud iNotes (formerly LotusLive iNotes) product.
Provide high level direction on antispam architecture and policy.
Drive deployment of spam filtering strategy and technology, including
Identification, testing and integration of vendor and inhouse antispam technology
Negotiation with vendors to leverage existing relationships and userbase volumes and drive substantial discounts in antispam and antivirus purchases.
Engage with customers, product, development and testing teams to drive development of inhouse spam filtering resources
Assistance in IBM internal security standards compliance
Lead the LotusLive Postmaster and Abuse team for policy enforcement and delivery
Active and involved participation in MAAWG and other security / antispam groups
Additionally handle escalated trouble tickets related to messaging and antispam across IBM SmartCloud Notes and iNotes.
Subject Matter Expert for antispam, contributing expertise and knowledge within IBM

Outblaze Limited August 2001 - April 2009 Head, Antispam Operations

Managed the postmaster and abuse desk, enforcing antispam policies and troubleshooting mail delivery and filtering issues
Conceptualized and implemented filters like HELO and URI filtering and Feedback Loops linked to a user driven spam reporting system.
Filtering strategy focused on blocking large amounts of spam for a comparatively small investment in processing power, and with a minimum of false positives, which my team makes it a point to address.
Maintained contacts with various stakeholders in the antispam community, including peers in the industry, blocklist operators, government regulators and international organizations
- Steered Outblaze's membership into multistakeholder groups such as the London Action Plan and MAAWG
Prepared a detailed response to the antispam consultation process initiated by the Hong Kong regulators
- OFTA, available at http://www.outblaze.com/antispam/ofta_info.php
- CITB, available at http://www.citb.gov.hk/ctb/submission/Outblaze.pdf
Regular speaker on spam issues at workshops organized by international organizations such as the ITU, APECTEL and OECD as well as at industry organized antispam conferences such as MAAWG and APRICOT.

BPL Innovision Pvt Ltd, 2000-2001 Unix Systems and Antispam Administrator

Built and Maintained mailserver and spam filtering infrastructure for group companies.
- BPL Mobile (Email to SMS gateway)
- BPLMail (BPL Group corporate mail system)
- BPLNet (Regional ISP providing dialup and colocation services)
- OyeIndia (Postmaster for a then fast growing portal and freemail service)
Worked with customer sites to help resolve security issues in their server infrastructure
Worked with BPL legal department to deter marketers from SMS spamming our users.

Juno Online Services [United Online] 2000 Associate Member – Security and Abuse Team

Responded to abuse desk emails and addressed user concerns about spam issues.
Rewrote a complete set of templated responses to common abuse desk queries.
Helped train and guide new team members.

Professional Activities and Honors

Ranked #19 in Businessweek’s 2002 list of Top 25 e-biz professionals in the world.
Program Committee member at CEAS, an academic conference for researchers on abuse issues in Collaboration and Messaging. Program chair for Cybersecurity in CEAS 2011.
Chair of the Award Committee for the Free Software Foundation's awards for Advancement of Free Software and Projects of Social Benefit.
Coordinator, CAUCE Asia Pacific.
Organization of spam tracks at regional netops meetings like APRICOT, SANOG and APNIC
Regular speaker on spam at conferences hosted by international organizations (ITU, APECTEL and OECD) and industry conferences (MAAWG and APRICOT, as well as FICCI).

Publications

Background Paper for the ITU Botnet Mitigation Toolkit
Spam Problems in Developing Economies, part of a section on International Cooperation in the OECD Antispam Toolkit
Co-author of the chapter on spam and cybercrime in "Internet Governance: Asia-Pacific Perspectives", Edited by Danny Butt and published by UNDP/APDIP.

Internet Governance: Asia-Pacific perspectives
Editor: Danny Butt (Foreword by Nitin Desai)
© UNDP-APDIP, Elsevier, 2005, 155 pages
ISBN-13: 978-81-312-0110-7
ISBN-10: 81-312-0110-4