Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
We held our official member meeting online two weeks ago, alongside updates on the running of the organization and introductions to our Board election candidates we unveiled details of our upcoming “Multi-Engine Quality Certification” scheme, which we expect to have fully operational very soon. Recordings and slide decks are available to members via the member site.
The second round of paper selection for our October Cyber Research Conference in Brussels has been completed and several more promising speakers chosen, we will announce them shortly pending confirmation from the speakers and details will be added to the event page. A full agenda should be available in the next few weeks, space has been reserved for last-minute items as well as member presentations. Members can sign up to attend via the member site, ticketing for non-members will open as soon as possible, currently held up by complications with local tax registration which should be resolved in the next few weeks.
We are also planning for our next Testing Town Hall event, scheduled for early July; we hope to be able to announce speakers and topics in the next few weeks. Any members or non-members interested in sharing some insights with our community are welcome to get in touch to propose a talk at one of our online events. To attend our Testing Town Halls, sign up for event notifications.
Working Groups
After updates to members at our recent online member meeting, our Working Groups have been back to work on their various projects.
Our Scam & Phishing paper has completed the formal adoption process and is now an official AMTSO guideline; tests following the guidance are already under way and we hope to see initial results shortly. The team held a call last week to review next steps ahead of the close of commentary, we will be augmenting the landing page for the guidelines with additional information on scams, as well as preparing a system to confirm tests have properly followed the guidelines.
Our Sandbox Evaluation group held a call this week and reviewed proposed updates covering testing of LLM handling within sandbox solutions, the changes have been shared with our new AI Working Group for additional feedback and we expect to roll them in to the official Framework document soon. A round of testing covering multiple public and semi-public sandbox tools will be under way shortly with details released under our Testing Protocol Standard last week.
The AI Working Group met last week and already has a working draft of testing guidance covering agentic AI protective solutions, work to refine and finalize this is ongoing but we hope to have a public draft available in short order. The group continues to grow and members are welcome to sign up via the usual channels.
Our RTTL group held a call this week where we reviewed a PoC for a new intel-sharing platform, allowing human and automated agents to submit, augment and enrich data within the system interactively.
Our multiscanner group shared details of the project with members for the first time at the recent member meeting, the final steps of laying out the process structure are nearing completion and we hope to have the certification scheme up and running in the next few weeks.
Board and Management
Voting in our annual Board elections will close next week, at 12 noon Pacific time on Tuesday June 2nd. Members who have yet to submit their votes are requested to do so ahead of the cutoff to ensure their support for our Board candidates is recorded; the new Board will officially be formed on July 1st at the start of our new membership year.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Recent updates to our Test Calendar include major Q1 reports from MRG Effitas and SE Labs, along with MacOS reports from AV-Test and May data from Virus Bulletin‘s VB100 certification scheme. Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- A Public Test Notification was issued on behalf of Venak Security for their Q2 2026 Sandbox Evaluation Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP204) on Friday, May 23rd, 2026. Phase 1 Commentary remains open.
- Public Test Notifications were issued on behalf of MRG-Effitas for their Q2 2026 360 Degree Enterprise Assessment and Certification (Endpoint) (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP203) and 360 Degree Android Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP202) on Wednesday, May 21st, 2026. Phase 1 Commentary remains open.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection closed covering the SE Labs Q1’2026 Enterprise, Small Business, and Consumer Endpoint Test Reports (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP181) on Tuesday, May 26th, 2026. A Compliance Report confirming adherence to the Standard was issued on the same date.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collections closed covering the AV-TEST March 2026 Test Reports for MacOS Tahoe Business Security Products (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP185) and MacOS Tahoe Consumer Security Products (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP186) on Tuesday, May 26th, 2026. Compliance Reports confirming adherence to the Standard were issued on the same date.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collections were issued on Thursday, May 28th, 2026 for the MRG Effitas Q1 2026 360 Degree Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP191) and Q1 2026 360 Android Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP190). Commentary will close on Friday, June 5th, 2026.
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our Test Calendar.
Membership
Members should all have received invoices in recent weeks for renewal of their memberships for 2026-27, our thanks to those who have already paid. We request members settle their payments promptly, or get in touch if there are issues or delays anticipated, to assist with budgeting for the upcoming financial year.
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.