Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
We have announced the first selected speakers for our October Cyber Research Conference in Brussels, with the call for papers still open (until the end of April). We look forward to talks from Ryan Sherstobitoff of Shadowgrid on Chinese router relay networks, Paul Inella of TDI on “Evaluating Cybersecurity Effectiveness”, AMTSO advisory board member Jeffrey Linenfelser on “Behavioral Security Validation”, and former AMTSO Board and exec team members Eddy Willems (WAVCi) and Righard Zwienenberg (ESET) on the latest developments in social engineering. We aim to announce additional early selections soon, with more to come once we pass the official deadline; space in the agenda is reserved for AMTSO-specific discussions and for late-breaking topics. We will also be opening ticketing for non-members shortly, members can already sign up via the member site. Full details of the event can be found on the event page.
In other event news, we held our April Testing Town Hall last week with a lineup of updates on AMTSO’s evolving projects, including planned expansion of our RTTL system, an overview of our Scam & Phishing Testing Guidelines paper (open for public review and comment until the end of April), and a proposal for a new Working Group focused on AI security, which is now being set up and recruiting member representatives with interest or expertise in the area. We also heard a presentation from Cameron Camp of SecureIQLab on their experiences with testing AI security (recording now available on the event page), and special guest Paul Zenker discussed physical security aspects of penetration testing and the need for standards in their evaluation; AMTSO is looking into setting up another project to assist in this area.
Our next online event will be our May member meeting schduled for May 13th; there will be another Testing Town Hall event in July.
Board and Management
The cutoff for nominations for our Board of Directors elections passed this week, the slate includes sitting directors Alex Vukcevic, Jesse Song, and Jamz Yaneza, with former AMTSO president Dennis Batchelder of AppEsteem joining the list to represent our Tester member constituency. The election will officially commence on May 7th with a chance to hear from the candidates at our online member meeting on May 13th. The new Board will be formed on July 1st at the start of our new member year.
Working Groups
We heard updates from many of our active groups on last week’s Testing Town Hall call, including an in-depth look at RTTL expansion plans from project lead and AMTSO CTO Alex Vukcevic, and a look at our draft Scam & Phishing Testing Guidelines paper – this remains open for public comment until the end of the month, at which time it will be updated to address any issues raised before a final version is put before the membership for formal approval. The Scam & Phishing working group met this week and discussed a few suggested tweaks to the paper as well as proposals to create create a simplified checklist to allow tests to be confirmed as aligned with the guidance. Our Multiscanner Validation group also held a call this week, with initial trials almost complete we expect to see the full process pinned down in time to share with members at the May member meeting. Our latest sandbox project call was postponed due to a clash with the Testing Town Hall last week, but discussions about the direction of trial testing are ongoing. We are also in process of creating a new group to work on AI-related issues, members interested in participating are invited to sign up.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Recent additions to our Test Calendar include Q2 consumer testing from MRG Effitas, the latest report from AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation, April certifications under the VB100 scheme from Virus Bulletin, and a round of updates from AV-Comparatives. Coming soon we expect to see more scam & phishing testing data from Artifact Security, plus MacOS testing from AV-Test and Q1 reports from SE Labs, all somewhat delayed based on initial publication estimates.
Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- A Public Test Notification was issued on behalf of Virus Bulletin (VB) for their upcoming Q2’2026 VBSpam Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP196) on Wednesday, April 1st, 2026. Phase 1 Commentary is now open.
- A Public Test Notification was issued on behalf of SE Labs for their Q2 2026 Endpoint Protection Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP197) on Wednesday, April 15th, 2026.
- Public Test Notifications were issued on behalf of Testing Ground Labs for their April 2026 Consumer Android Protection Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP198) and April 2026 Enterprise Android Protection Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP199) on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026.
A significant number of AMTSO Compliance Confirmation Reports were issued during the last several weeks:
- SecureIQLab’s Advanced Cloud Firewall CyberRisk Validation Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP158) on Monday, March 30th, 2026.
- Testing Ground Labs’ February 2026 Consumer Android Malware Detection Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP189) on Monday, March 30th, 2026.
- Virus Bulletin’s VBSpam Q1 2026 Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP179) on Thursday, April 2nd, 2026.
- AV-TEST’s January/February 2026 Virus Protection Test Report covering Windows 11 for Consumer Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP188) on Tuesday, April 14th, 2026.
- AV-TEST’s January/February 2026 Virus Protection Test Report covering Windows 11 for Business Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP187) on Tuesday, April 14th, 2026.
- MRG-Effitas’s Q2’2026 Consumer Assessment and Certification Test Report (AMTSO-LS1-TP192) on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026.
- AppEsteem’s January to March 2026 Test Report from the 2026 UwS Test Series (AMTSO Test ID : AMTSO-LS1-TP180) on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026.
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our Test Calendar.
Membership
As we approach our new member year on July 1st, members are reminded that invoicing for renewal fees will be run in early May. We look forward to more new members joining our community soon. Anyone interested in becoming an AMTSO member can find more information on our joining page.
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
We send this newsletter to all AMTSO member representatives, as well as non-members who have engaged with AMTSO recently and have an interest in what’s going on in the AMTSO community. If you have any friends or colleagues who would like to be kept informed of developments in the testing world, they can sign up here. If you’d like to know more about joining the AMTSO community, there’s information and an application form here.