Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
Our recent Dublin event was a big success with lots of useful discussion. Alongside the updates on our various projects and working groups, we also held an award ceremony and met our new president. Recordings and slide decks from the event have been made available to members via our members-only website, and we hope to be able to share some highlights more publicly soon.
Our next event will be a Testing Town Hall on November 6th. We’re currently finalizing the agenda and expect to post some details of the presentations in the next week or so.
Working Groups and Project Teams
We’ve set up a new page on our public website providing details of all our active working groups and other projects, including which members are participating in each group. Members can sign up to participate in working groups via the groups section of the member website, any non-members interested in participating can join us to contribute to an existing group or help drive a new project. As projects progress we also often reach out to non-members active in a relevant area for input and feedback, you can sign up to keep informed of activities in a given project here.
Sandbox Evaluation Working Group
Our sandbox project was also presented and discussed in Dublin, and we’ve now issued the latest draft of our evaluation framework in “preprint” form for public review. This feedback round will remain open until the end of October, at which point any input will be reviewed by the working group and actioned as needed, before a final draft is put forward to the AMTSO membership for vote and formal adoption.
VPN Working Group
Our VPN paper was also reviewed by members in Dublin, and work on the draft continues with further comments and suggestions being reviewed and implemented. We will hold another group call next week where we hope to finalize the remaining outstanding comments, and a full draft will be circulated to members for wider input as soon as that milestone has been reached. As with the Sandbox paper we will also be sharing the draft with non-members active in the space prior to building a final draft; a second paper focusing on wider security measures implemented alongside core VPN features is also in the works.
XDR Working Group
We had a lengthy discussion on XDR in Dublin, with presentations from several tester members already working in the space, and our project team is continuing with its work of harvesting intelligence on the market so we can address the testing needs appropriately. A large part of this work has already been carried out and we continue to receive further input from vendors on their own offerings. We expect to put out some initial findings publicly very soon.
RTTL Working Group
The RTTL project team will meet again this week to review progress, with several new contributors signed up to the system in recent weeks. We look forward to a resulting increase in the flow of data into the system, alongside improved validation from the community. Plans to further expand the parallel ThreatList system continue alongside, with outreach to potential contributors in the works; anyone interested in participating in this open project can find more details on the ThreatList page.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Our Test Calendar has been rather quiet in recent weeks thanks to various industry events keeping test lab staff busy, including our own Dublin meetings, but we’ve added several updates in the last few days including the first VBSpam comparative from Virus Bulletin to be run under our Standard, and several updates from AV-Comparatives. Coming up soon we expect to see Q3 data from both SE Labs and MRG Effitas, as well as regular updates from AppEsteem, Virus Bulletin and Testing Ground Labs. Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- A Public Test Notification was issued by the AV Lab Cybersecurity Foundation for their upcoming November 2024 Advanced In-the-Wild Malware Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP129) on Monday, October 14th, 2024.
- A Public Test Notification was issued for the Virus Bulletin Q4 2024 VBSpam Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP130) on Wednesday, October 16th, 2024.
- Phase 1 Commentary may be submitted at the usual location: https://members.amtso.org/amtso-standards-phase-1-commentary-submission/
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection covering the Virus Bulletin Q3 2024 VBSpam Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP119) is active through Friday, October 18th, 2024.
- Phase 2 Commentary may be submitted at the usual location: https://members.amtso.org/amtso-standards-phase-2-commentary-submission/
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our test calendar.
Finances and Membership
A summary of our financial status and membership changes was provided during our recent Dublin meeting. Discussions were held with several potential new members during the Virus Bulleting conference following our own event, and we hope to see some new signups very soon. Anyone interested in joining our community 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.