Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO.
Meetings and Events
We have a Testing Town Hall coming up next week, on Wednesday November 6th. The agenda includes a guest talk on AI Malware Simulation from Nima Bagheri of Venak Security, and a member presentation on “Disparities between Cyber Security and the Education System” from Jeremiah Morgan of SE Labs. We still have some more content yet to be confirmed, but call details have gone out to members and those non-members who’ve signed up – this can be done via the form on the event info page, where agenda updates will also be posted.
The next Town Hall event is planned for February – if you have a short presentation you’d like to share, or a topic you’d like to request we cover, just let us know via [email protected].
Sandbox Evaluation Working Group
We continue to seek feedback on our Sandbox Evaluation Framework draft, with discussions held with some major players in the field and more outreach ongoing. We hope to see some trial tests using the framework early in 2025, and with input still coming in we have extended the comment deadline to the end of November. Once the initial paper is finalized there will be a vote of AMTSO members to officially adopt it, and work will commence on the next stage, focusing on the sample sets used to measure various sandbox features.
VPN Working Group
Our VPN project team held another call last week to pick through the remaining open comments and suggestions, and we expect to finalize our initial draft very soon. This will then be shared with members and others with an interest in the area for feedback, and we hope to bring a final version to members for voting in parallel with the Sandbox paper. This project will also have a second phase, this time looking at the additional security features included with many VPN packages.
XDR Working Group
Our XDR team continues to harvest data, with a shortlist of vendors to cover finalized on last week’s group call and work to aggregate the information gathered so far well under way. We will continue to reach out to affected vendors for their input, including confirmation of the data uncovered by the team, as we move towards publication. The group will then move forward to look into specific testing criteria and guidance.
RTTL Working Group
Our RTTL team will hold another call today to carry out the usual review of status, track new contributors coming on board, and monitor system updates and improvements. The latest additions to the system include improved statistical presentation covering individual contributors to ThreatList.
Other Projects and Working Groups
Details of all our active Working Groups can be found on our Groups page – we welcome suggestions for new projects, and anyone can sign up to keep informed of progress of our various projects using the form linked from the page.
AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar
Recent additions to our Test Calendar include the somewhat delayed Q3 results from SE Labs covering consumer, small business and enterprise-grade products, alongside regular updates from AppEsteem and Virus Bulletin and the latest Android results from AV-Test. Here’s a summary of recent activities from our Standard compliance team:
- A Public Test Notification was issued by Virus Bulletin (VB) for their upcoming Q4’2024 VBSpam Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP130) on Wednesday, October 16th, 2024. This test is slated to begin in early November 2024.
- A Public Test Re-Notification was been issued by Virus Bulletin (VB) for their 2024 VB100 Test Series (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP095) on Thursday, October 17th, 2024.
- Phase 2 Commentary Collection covering the released TGL’s Consumer Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP123) and Consumer Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP124) closed on Thursday, October 24th, 2024. The corresponding Compliance Reports were issued on the same day.
- A Public Test Notification was issued by TGL (Testing Ground Labs) for their upcoming October 2024 Consumer Android Malware Detection Test (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP131) on Thursday, October 17th, 2024.
- SE Labs has released their Q3’2024 Enterprise, Small Business, and Consumer Endpoint Test Reports (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP122). AMTSO is now collecting Phase 2 Commentary based on your experiences with this test for a Standards Compliance Check through Monday, November 4th, 2024.
Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our test calendar.
Finances and Membership
We have a number of new membership applications currently being processed by our membership committee, and expect to be able to announce new members in the next update. Anyone interested in joining our community can find more information on our joining page.
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
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