The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) will be offering e-mail authentication training to all U.S. government agencies and organizations based on a contract awarded to them through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The OTA’s curriculum is being delivered by certified OTA staff and member companies through the CERT Program at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute to DHS, who will provide the online training to federal employees.

The training and implementation of e-mail authentication is hoped to add to the levels of protection surrounding the government’s infrastructure and ability to detect and block malicious e-mail attacks.

Based on OTA research, adoption of e-mail authentication by leading federal agencies has increased from 32% in April 2010 to 40% in October 2011.