Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Board and Management
We held a Board call last week, with members of our advisory board in attendance to share their advice and guidance. Among the discussions, the Board confirmed the schedule for the upcoming Board elections; the deadline for candidate nominations has been set for April 22nd – any member representatives interested in running for a Board position (there are 4 posts up for vote) should contact AMTSO ahead of this deadline. Voting information will be circulated to members and voting will open on May 8th, and on May 15th we will hold an online member meeting, giving members a chance to hear from and ask questions of the candidates. Voting will close on June 3rd, and the new Board will be formed on July 1st at the start of our new company year.
Meetings and Events
We have another Testing Town Hall event planned for April 10th. On the agenda so far we have a talk on XDR testing from Stefan Dumitrascu of SE Labs, postponed from the last event. More speakers are being lined up, and anyone interested in presenting at one of our events is invited to contact AMTSO for more details. Non-members can sign up to attend our events here: https://www.amtso.org/amtso-event-registration/
RTTL and ThreatList
We held our regular call this week to review our sample-sharing systems, the team noted regular contributions into RTTL starting from some new contributors, while a few others re-started after some technical issues, bringing the current total of active contributors to 15. The team also discussed provision of more detailed feedback and metadata into the system by contributors running their own review and analysis of submitted samples. The ThreatList continues to steadily build contributors too, and we expect to see the first tests making use of the confirmed sample sets very soon.
XDR Testing Criteria
Our XDR team met last week, reviewing initial prototypes for survey forms to collect data on test coverage and product components; after some experimentation we found it necessary to produce separate question sets for test labs and vendors, but will aim to align the data in similar sections for simple absorption by readers. The tester survey is being reviewed by the tester members participating in the project, while the vendor version is being expanded and once complete will be shared with vendor members and non-members active in the XDR space for final feedback before full roll-out.
Sandbox Evaluation
We are setting up a new Working Group to develop a set of guidelines/standards (and possibly tools/test samples) for the evaluation of sandbox solutions, with an initial outline of a proposed paper already created. The proposal aims to provide a structure to allow evaluation data to be tuned to specific use-cases. Vendor members providing sandbox systems have been approached for their input and tester members invited to join the project; any other members interested in the area are welcome to sign up to the group, which will hold regular calls over the next few months to finalize the draft. Non-members in the sandbox space will also be approached for their feedback and ideas as the project progresses.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
As expected, we saw a flurry of test publications over the last few weeks, as several labs pushed out results from their final rounds of 2023 tests while others published their first for 2024. Here’s a summary of activities from our Standard compliance team:
- An incremental AMTSO Compliance Confirmation Report was issued on Wednesday, February 28th, 2024 covering the Virus Bulletin January 2024 and February 2024 VB100 Test Reports (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP095) as part of their VB100 2024 Test Series.
- An AMTSO Compliance Confirmation Report was issued on Monday, March 4th, 2024 covering the AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation’s January 2024 Advanced “In the Wild” Malware Detection Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP102).
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection was launched for the January/February 2024 testing cycle covering the AV-TEST Institute’s Test Results for Best Anti-Virus Apps for Android (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP103). A Compliance Report is anticipated on or about Monday, March 11th, 2024.
- Phase 1 Commentary Collection was initiated for the MRG-Effitas Q1 2024 360 Degree Android Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP111) and the MRG-Effitas Q1 2024 360 Degree Assessment and Certification (Endpoint) (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP112). Both will close on Monday, March 11th, 2024.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection was initiated for the MRG-Effitas Q4 2023 360 Degree Android Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP098) and the MRG-Effitas Q4 2023 360 Degree Assessment and Certification (Endpoint) (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP099). Both will close on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024 with a Compliance Report expected in due course.
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our test calendar.
Promotion and Outreach
We published the latest in our series of member interviews last week, a discussion with AMTSO Board member Jeffrey Wu of Testing Ground Labs, and we hope to add more to the series soon. AMTSO representatives will be present at the AV-Test Institute’s annual security summit and awards ceremony later this month.
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
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