Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
We are shortly about to announce the timing and location of our 2026 conference, and we’re offering a chance to help support our event by becoming a “Friend of AMTSO”! With a limited number of places available, and at a very reasonable cost, members and non-members alike can contribute to our event, get free places to attend, place their promotional materials physically and digitally, and feel the satisfaction of assisting with our important work. To find out more, check out the factsheet or drop us a line via events@amtso.org!
We expect to officially announce the venue (at least the city, if not the actual building) and dates for our 2026 event during our Testing Town Hall event this week. The conference will build on the success of our Lisbon event in October of this year, with a similar format of cutting-edge presentations, open discussion on subjects that matter to us all, and lots of time to network with old friends and new.
In other meeting & event news, our Testing Town Hall on Wednesday December 10th will feature similar talks and discussion in an online format. Speakers will include Stefan Dumitrascu of Artifact Security, discussing their plans for evaluating protections against Scams & Phishing as well as other testing plans, and Nima Bagheri of Venak Security looking at how software vulns are sued to bypass protections. We’ll also be discussing some proposed updates to our Testing Protocol Standard. Members should already have the event in their calendars; to join us there, just sign up via the event page.
Working Groups
Our Working Groups and project teams continue to meet as we head towards the end of the year break, despite disruption from some industry events and early holidays.
Last week we held the regular call of our RTTL team, whose plans for major upgrades and expansions mean we will hold a special extended call next week to cover more ground.
Our Scam & Phishing group met this week to delve deeper into definitions of scams and the value of sub-categorizing scam types and techniques, with material for our planned testing guidance building up rapidly.
Our Sandbox Evaluation project, which also met last week,continues to seek willing participants to be tested under our framework to provide more data for comparison based on use-case weightings.
Our new Multiscanner Validation Criteria project team held a curtailed meeting this week as many key participants were travelling, but will reconvene in two weeks’ time to continue building the outline of a set of criteria to recommend to multi-scanner providers.
And of course our event planning team has been very busy, working to align with a potential event partner for our 2026 conference, as well as mapping out the sponsorship and “Friends of AMTSO” support options noted above.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Plenty of new tests have emerged in recent weeks as the final reports of the year go live. We’ve updated our Test Calendar to include Q3 Android data from MRG Effitas, with their Windows report expected shortly too, as well as the latest Windows reports from AV-Test, VB100 certifications from Virus Bulletin, and Unwanted Software reporting from AppEsteem. Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- Compliance Confirmation Reports covering the AV-TEST September/October Virus Protection Test Report on Windows 11 for Business Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP147) and September/October 2025 Virus Protection Test Report on Windows 11 for Consumer Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP148) following their five business day Phase 2 commentary period. Both reports were issued on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection covering the MRG-Effitas Q3’2025 Android Efficacy Assessment Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP162) closed on Friday, December 5th, 2025, and a Compliance Confirmation Report has been issued.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection covering the AppEsteem July to November tests as part of their 2025 UwS Test Series reports (AMTSO Test ID : AMTSO-LS1-TP137) will close on Monday, December 8th, 2025. Twenty-five companies have been invited to provide feedback on this test cycle.
- A reminder to all testers that 2025 annual test cycles are coming to a close now that we are in December. New test plans covering 2026 will need to be provided for public test notifications over the next month.
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our Test Calendar.
Membership
Several new member applications are currently processing and should complete before the end of the year, with a number of other interested parties finalizing their internal processes before filing to join us. 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
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.