1)  Guidelines about testing for false positives (FP) were adopted. McAfee is fully aware of how important the FP issue is (all security vendors are – it’s a common problem) and we dedicate tremendous resources to ensuring the highest quality in our security updates – now more than ever before. We welcome the new joint guidelines related to testing of false positives as this will hopefully put some needed order into what is currently a bit of a “Wild West” type of testing. We are hoping that in the light provided by these new guidelines, the FPs from all security products will be much more fairly assessed. New documents should appear very soon at www.amtso.org/documents.html.

2) Another very important development is the imminent introduction of AMTSO subscriptions. This will allow academics, individuals and other software security professionals to participate in the AMTSO discussions for testing practices in security software. Access to the documents during the draft stages will provide more openness, something which AMTSO was striving for from the very beginning. Subscriptions will only cost about 20 Euros (compared to 2000 Euros for full voting members) and will allow many more voices to be heard. It is expected that the logistics for subscriptions (e.g. Web applications) will be put in place by the end of 2010.

McAfee Labs continues to take an active part in AMTSO work because we believe that cooperation within the security industry is extremely important. We encourage all people interested in improving the quality of security products to consider taking an AMTSO subscription when www.amtso.org start taking them.