AMTSO meets again to discuss better testing
Further documents developed at Cupertino meeting.
This week has seen another meeting of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization, AMTSO, hosted by security giant
Symantec in its HQ town of Cupertino, California. The meeting was attended as usual by representatives of most
of the major industry players and numerous testing bodies, as well as representatives from the worlds of academia and
publishing.
The meeting covered a range matters, including the formation of a board of advisors for the group, the adoption of a new
logo, the setting up of a review process to debate the quality of tests, and further work on several documents first
proposed and discussed in the previous meeting, which took place in Oxford, UK last October.
Topics covered included gathering
and handling malicious samples, the ethics of creating new samples, and how to properly test the full range of
functionality in products, with a separate document covering 'in-the-cloud' technologies. These latest documents will
support the official guidelines already ratified and published by the body, the central principles of testing and a
best-practices document on running dynamic testing, both ratified at the Oxford meeting.
VB representatives were unable to attend the meeting, but played an active role in the creation of the in-the-cloud
document, and look forward to helping get these latest documents finalized at the next meeting, which is due to take place
in Budapest in early May.
More details on the meeting are blogged by AMTSO board member Stuart Taylor on the SophosLabs blog
here and advisory board member Neil J. Rubenking
here and
here.
04 February 2009
Tags:
academia, amtso, standards, testing.
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