Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
We’ve been posting highlights from our recent Lisbon conference publicly, there are now several available via our news pages and on our YouTube channel, with more to come over the next few weeks.
Planning for the 2026 edition is moving ahead well with a regular team call set up to push things forward. Our list of venues has been brought down to a targeted shortlist, and we should be announcing the dates and location within the next month. Next week we will be setting up a poll of our members to gather ideas for themes and topics to cover, and we will be launching a call for papers by the end of the year.
For scheduling reasons we’ve pushed our next Testing Town Hall online event back a few weeks to the end of the month, we expect to release details of the lineup of talks very soon.
Working Groups
Our various project teams have resumed their usual schedules as we return to normal following our conference, with a new group added to the lineup and more in the pipeline:
The Scam & Phishing group met last week and this, looking at both vendor input on defining the aspects of the problem and reports from testers on their experiences designing and running tests evaluating the latest anti-scam technologies.
The Sandbox working group held a catch-up call last week and will meet again next week to restart work on getting solutions evaluated under our testing framework, as well as looking ahead at a full testing harness proposal.
Our RTTL team held their regular update call last week, reviewing the detailed discussions held during the Lisbon meeting and planning for new expansions and improvements to the system.
Our newest project team, working on guidance for validation of solutions for inclusion in multi-scanning systems, held a launch call last week and will be holding regular calls to move the project forward on at pace, with outcomes planned to be operational within six months.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Our Test Calendar continues to grow, the latest additions include an ATP overview from AV-Test, alongside several of our regular participants with their monthly and quarterly reports. Coming soon we expect to see Q3 reports from MRG Effitas, among other highlights. Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- A Public Test Notification was issued on behalf of the AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation for their upcoming Internet Banking Protection Test, 2026 Edition (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP168) on Wednesday, October 29th, 2025 with Phase 1 Commentary welcomed.
- A Compliance Confirmation Report covering the Virus Bulletin Q3 2025 VBSpam Test (AMTSO-LS1-TP157) was issued on Friday, October 31st, 2025 following their five business day Phase 2 commentary period.
- A Compliance Confirmation Report covering the Artifact Security Scam and Phishing Evaluation Test – August 2025 (AMTSO-LS1-TP159) was issued on Wednesday, October 29th, 2025 following their Phase 2 Commentary period which opened on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025.
- A Compliance Confirmation Report covering the AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation September 2025 Advanced In-the-Wild Malware Test (AMTSO-LS1-TP138) was issued on Wednesday, October 29th, 2025 following their Phase 2 Commentary period.
- Compliance Confirmation Reports covering the Testing Ground Labs (TGL) August 2025 Android Consumer Test (AMTSO-LS1-TP160) and August 2025 Android Enterprise Test (AMTSO-LS1-TP161) were released on Thursday, October 23rd, 2025 following their Phase 2 Commentary period.
- Phase 2 Commentary collections for the AV-TEST September/October Test Report covering Android Antivirus Applications (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP144) closed on Wednesday, November 5th, 2025 and a Compliance Confirmation report has been issued.
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our test calendar.
Board and Management
Members of our Board and exec team have been busy reviewing options for our 2026 events, and will be holding the regular November meeting of the Board in two weeks’ time. We continue to seek a suitable person to take on the role of Chief Marketing Officer and help promote AMTSO and our activities, volunteers from within the AMTSO membership are asked to get in touch via info@amtso.org for more information on the position.
Our team was sad to hear of the loss of David Harley, who passed away recently. David was a key part of AMTSO in our early days, serving as a director for several years and making many important contributions to our guidelines and other documents. Even in retirement David still kept up an interest in AMTSO, regularly sending in corrections to errors and typos in our output until just a few months ago. A detailed in memoriam post can be found at Virus Bulletin.
Membership
We continue to work on on-boarding new members with several applications expected in the next few weeks. Anyone interested in becoming an AMTSO member and contributing their insights to our various projects can find more information on our joining page.
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
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