# WP Tavern podcast 224 David Snead on Secure Hosting Alliance > [!question] Lingering Questions > - How does the IIF's submit→enrich→route model compare structurally to M3AAWG and registrar abuse frameworks — is it a genuine improvement or a WordPress-adjacent reinvention? > - Does GoDaddy's IIF participation intersect with anything already in the vault's hosting-security notes? > [!link] Cross Reference > - [[3. Resources/MOCs/WordPress Hosting Security Stack MOC]] — the Internet Infrastructure Forum and Secure Hosting Alliance are directly part of this MOC's subject matter. > [!quote] Vocabulary > - **IIF (Internet Infrastructure Forum)** — a platform-agnostic initiative for real-time abuse-intelligence sharing among hosts and registrars. > - **xarf** — the abstracted, standardized data format ("timestamps, domain names, IP addresses...") used for abuse reporting, designed to keep shared data non-proprietary. ## Bib capsule WP Tavern host Nathan Wrigley interviews David Snead, a hosting-industry lawyer since 1999, about cross-industry collaboration on security and abuse response — centered on the Internet Infrastructure Forum (IIF) and the Secure Hosting Alliance he now leads. ## Author's thesis Hosting abuse (phishing, fake shops, credential harvesting) crosses company lines, and isolated, siloed abuse handling wastes effort and hurts smaller hosts most disproportionately; the IIF's answer is a neutral secretariat that enriches and routes shared, standardized abuse data — and the pitch that gets hosts to actually participate is business self-interest, not moral appeal. ## Key arguments (≤3) 1. **Self-interest, not virtue, drives participation** — the business argument (protecting margins from abuse costs) is more compelling to hosts than a moral case for collaboration. 2. **Abuse has a measurable cost chain** — a single fake shop generates processing fees, bandwidth waste, and abuse-handling load that draws resources away from growth. 3. **A neutral secretariat makes sharing tractable** — submitted abuse data gets enriched with other submissions and routed to the right party, using a standardized, non-proprietary format (xarf) that lowers the trust barrier. ## Claim atoms ### Business self-interest beats moral appeals for abuse participation > [!quote] ID:rw_h1 > "The business argument around abuse is a much more compelling discussion than kind of moral persuasion." 00:16:50 — Snead on why hosts join the IIF; reframes security collaboration as margin protection, not altruism — the core adoption lever. ### Fake shops impose measurable costs on hosts > [!quote] ID:rw_h2 > "If you have a fake shop, that's going to generate a huge amount of abuse, and it's taking away resources that you can use to actually grow your business." 00:16:50 — the fake-shop test case; a concrete cost chain (processing fees, bandwidth, abuse load) that makes the business case land. ### A neutral secretariat enriches and routes abuse data > [!quote] ID:rw_h3 > "You submit the information... to the secretariat, who then enriches it with all the other information that's been submitted and sends it to the right person." 00:10:20 — the IIF's operating mechanism; the submit→enrich→route pattern is the reusable architectural idea of the whole effort. ### Shared abuse data stays non-proprietary via xarf > [!quote] ID:rw_h4 > "It's things like timestamps, domain names, IP addresses... further abstracted into xarf, which is a language that's used for abuse reporting." 00:14:26 — answering the confidentiality objection; non-proprietary, standardized data lowers the trust barrier to sharing, and jurisdictional privacy is flagged as the residual risk. ## Permanent candidates - **Shared security goods scale on self-interest, not virtue** — a cross-domain collective-action claim, strongest candidate. Promoted below. ## Processing checklist - [x] Port existing deep-read analysis into Konik Literature format - [x] Promote the self-interest collective-action permanent candidate - [x] Connect into the relevant MOC - [ ] Compare the IIF model to M3AAWG and registrar abuse frameworks - [ ] Skim hostingsecurity.net Trust Seal Certification provisions ## Metadata - Source: [#224 – David Snead on Building Trust and Collaboration in the Hosting Industry With the Secure Hosting Alliance](3.%20Resources/Readwise/Podcasts/%23224%20–%20David%20Snead%20on%20Building%20Trust%20and%20Collaboration%20in%20the%20Hosting%20Industry%20With%20the%20Secure%20Hosting%20Alliance.md) ## Links - [[3. Resources/MOCs/WordPress Hosting Security Stack MOC]] — the IIF and Secure Hosting Alliance are direct instances of the hosting-security-collaboration subject this MOC covers.