AMTSO News 2024-06-07

Welcome to our regular roundup of events and activities in and around AMTSO. 

Board and Management

Voting closed in our annual Board elections last week, the votes were confirmed with all quorums met and work has begun to integrate the successful candidates into their new roles. Stefan Dumitrascu of SE Labs will be joining the Board representing tester members, while Jamz Yaneza of Trend Micro will become a director on the non-tester side. Current Board members Alexander Vukcevic of Avira and Jesse Song of SKD labs will also be renewing their positions for a further two years. The new Board will be formed at the start of our company year on July 1st, but newly elected individuals will be invited to several calls ahead of that time to help the new directors settle into their new roles. This will include the June Board call which will be held later in the month; the May meeting of the Board was held ahead of the close of voting.

Meetings and Events

On July 3rd we will hold another Testing Town Hall event featuring presentations from Google, on Android security, and SE Labs, on XDR testing. More speakers/topics are being worked on, and full event details will be circulated to members and guests shortly.

RTTL Working Group

The RTTL team met us usual last week, tracking contributions from existing participants and new applications to join the project. Discussion also covered plans to implement size limits on samples and expiry timings for older contributions, some system updates including implementation of new certificates, and plans to further promote participation in ThreatList to a wider group of potential contributors – information on the new system and how to become part of it can be found here. Anyone able to feed in regularly with new and important malware samples for use in testing and certification, and to share with the wider industry to improve protection of users, is encouraged to sign up to be part of the system.

XDR Working Group

The XDR team held a call this week, focusing on reviewing the first sets of responses to our survey of vendors and testers on which components of XDR suites are included in various offerings and covered by tests. More interested parties both within and outside the current AMTSO membership will be contacted for their input over the next few weeks.

Sandbox Evaluation Working Group

Our new sandbox group held its opening call last week, reviewing the initial draft of a guideline paper aiming to provide a framework for evaluation of sandboxes and other methods of analyzing suspected malicious code and samples. Following a period of initial feedback the group will be reaching out to a wider range of experts for further input, and we hope to get the paper finalized in the next few months. Further guidance on building representative sample sets for use in evaluations was also discussed on the call, as a potential follow-up project once the initial guidance has been finalized and published.

VPN Working Group

Our new VPN testing guidance project continues to gather participants, as well as beginning outreach to experts in the field outside the current membership, and we expect to launch the working group officially in the next few weeks. 

AMTSO Standard and Test Calendar

After a fairly quiet few weeks in testing, we are now into a much busier period as several test labs release their reports from the last few months of testing and start to issue notifications of upcoming Q3 tests. Here’s a summary of activities from our Standard compliance team:

  • AMTSO Compliance Reports confirming alignment with the Standard V1.3 were issued on Thursday, May 30th, 2024 for both the AV-TEST March 2024 MacOS Sonoma for Business Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP104) and the AV-TEST March 2024 MacOS Sonoma for Home Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP105) Test Reports.
  • Phase 2 Commentary covering the AV-TEST March/April 2024 Virus Protection on Windows 11 for Business Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP106) and AV-TEST March/April 2024 Virus Protection on Windows 11 for Home Users (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP107) will close on Thursday, June 6th, 2024 and Compliance Reports will be issued shortly thereafter.
  • Public Test Notifications have been issued for the MRG-Effitas Q2 2024 360 Degree Android Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP117) and Q2 2024 360 Degree Assessment and Certification (Endpoint) (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP118).  Phase 1 Commentary collection has been launched covering both tests. Material received from test subject vendors has been shared with the tester.
  • Testing Ground Labs (TGL) has released their April 2024 Consumer Android Malware Detection Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP114) and April 2024 Enterprise Android Malware Detection Test Report (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP115).  Phase 2 Commentary collection is underway through Tuesday, June 11th, 2024.
  • Phase 2 Commentary collection covering the MRG-Effitas Q1 2024 360 Degree Android Assessment and Certification (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP111) and Q1 2024 360 Degree Assessment and Certification (Endpoint) (AMTSO Test ID: AMTSO-LS1-TP112) are now open through Tuesday, June 11th, 2024.

Information on all published and upcoming tests being tracked by AMTSO can be found in our test calendar.

Promotion and Outreach

We published the latest in our series of interviews with individuals involved with AMTSO last week, a discussion with Microsoft’s Glaucia Young who has served on our Board for many years. Several new entries in the series are being worked on for the next few months.

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.