Today’s research strengthens tomorrow’s cybersecurity

Cybersecurity experts appreciate the great need for research. For this reason, companies and experts specializing in cybersecurity collect and analyze the incidents occurring around the globe, and then compile them in databases. Naturally, the use of AI is paramount in this field in the meantime. The experts at AV-TEST closely follow the latest developments, collect data on cybercrimes and evaluate this information in real time on its AV-ATLAS platform. According to Erik Heyland, Head of Testing Labs at AV-TEST, “the platform is free to use and its interface enables visitors to view the current state of affairs regarding the risks of the last 14 days.”

These risks include infected email attachments, phishing emails, blackmail and scam emails and deceptive links. The platform lists the latest subject lines and filenames that users need to watch out for as well as the number of occurrences. Approximately 100,000 new dangerous emails are recorded every two weeks. The AV-ATLAS platform reveals whether or not there has been a spike in the malware activity of specific operating systems, such as Windows, Mac or Android. It also shows that nearly 4 million new malware samples were recorded in just 2 weeks.

And new to the platform is the App Privacy Analysis area. There, experts analyze Android apps and evaluate the potential privacy concerns for users when using a certain Android app.

What’s more, the AV-TEST Institute puts all recorded incidents and their associated data to good use in their free product tests. For example, the test lab employs only malware samples for the product tests that have been recently recorded. The lab then sends the malware to the test platforms running Windows, Mac and Android. In this manner, the experts can determine the degree to which the latest security products for consumer users and corporate users can detect the latest dangers. “As an independent organization, AV-TEST is able to categorize and analyze malware by using analytic tools developed in-house for its tests. Objectivity, traceability and transparency are of absolute importance for our test results,” explains Erik Heyland, Head of Testing Labs at AV-TEST.

Annual evaluation of cybercrime data

Every year, the experts at AV-TEST also use the compiled data to publish a Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) report. The cyber incidents listed here by AV-TEST are based on extensive monitoring across the public Internet and dark web sources. The institute analyzes thousands of recorded cyber incidents and compares them to those from previous years. For example, the 2025/2026 Report indicates the continued growth of ransomware and DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service) – and the number of DDoS attacks even shows a sharp increase. The experts have also come to the conclusion that Germany may not top the list in Europe with 763 registered attacks, but this figure includes 226 ransomware attacks – which is more than in any other country in Europe.

There is a live ticker on the AV-TEST Institute homepage, which shows the current level of dangers – something even of interest to people who are not as interested in the latest technology. The following figures show the number of malware samples, based on the various time ranges, as of the press date: “Total known malware” – 1,598,972,085 samples, “New malware this year” – 45,997,825 samples and “New malware in the last 14 days” – 3,948,143 samples. The page even includes a figure for “New malware since page load”, which is constantly updated. Check out the numbers on the webpage for yourself.