Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
We are pleased to announce the venue for our 2026 Cyber Research Conference – we will be at the Renaissance Brussels Hotel for the event, which will take place on October 20-21. The venue is in the “European Quarter” of the city, very close to the European Parliament and European Commission buildings and just a few steps from the Brussels-Luxemburg rail station. The space and facilities look ideal and we look forward to hosting our members, speakers, and guest attendees there.
The Call for Papers for the conference is open until the end of April, and we will be announcing some of the first selected talk topics in the coming weeks. We will also be opening registration for our members via the member site, and tickets for non-members will be available soon.
Our various Working Groups are finalizing their latest outputs ready to discuss at our next Testing Town Hall event, which is scheduled for April 8th. We expect to have announcements from our Scam & Phishing and Multiscanner projects, as well as details of major expansion plans for our RTTL threat-intel system.
Working Groups
As noted above, most of our project groups are nearing the end of the latest development cycles. Our RTTL threat-intel sharing project team held their usual regular call last week to review the status of the system and look over the latest iteration of proposals for new features and a new structure. Our Multiscanner Validation group met this week to discuss the shape of a proposed framework for product validation, and our Scam & Phishing Working Group, which also met this week, is reviewing the latest draft of a set of guidelines. We expect to finalize these in the next few weeks.
All of these projects are aiming to complete their current phases in time to present on the next Testing Town Hall in early April, with several planning to release documents for review ahead of the event. Final adoption of any completed documents will include public and member review and approval cycles.
Our Sandbox Evaluation group will also be meeting next week on a rebooted schedule, with aims to push forward with the development and implementation of the framework published last year.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Another set of notifications has rounded out our list of regular tests for 2026, with 8 test series from 4 different labs set to run under our Standard on monthly or quarterly cycles. Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- Compliance Confirmation Reports covering the AV-TEST November and December 2025 Windows 11 Virus Protection Test Report for Business Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP147) and Home Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP148) were issued Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026.
- A Compliance Confirmation Report covering the MRG-Effitas Q1’2026 Consumer Assessment and Certification Test (AMTSO-LS1-TP177) was issued on Tuesday, February 9th, 2026 following a Phase 2 Commentary Collection during the reporting period. Phase 1 Commentary is now open.
- Five Public Test Notifications were issued on behalf of AV-TEST for their 2026 Test Series on Wednesday, February 4th, 2026. The tests included were the Android Consumer Product Test Series for 2026 (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP184), MacOS Business Product Test Series for 2026 (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP185), MacOS Consumer Product Test Series for 2026 (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP186), Windows Business Product Test Series for 2026 (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP187), and Windows Consumer Product Test Series for 2026 (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP188).
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our test calendar.
Board and Management
Our new President, Stefan Dumitrascu of Artifact Security, took up his role at the start of the month and has already been busy laying out ideas and plans for the future of the organization. Next week we will hold a Board meeting with members of our Advisory Board joining in to review our ongoing projects and discuss new directions.
Membership
We have several new memberships in the pipeline and look forward to announcing them in the next newsletter. Anyone interested in becoming an AMTSO member can find more information on our joining page.
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
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