Also known as reference set tests, static malware testing generally involves an on-demand scan of a range of malware, typically introduced to a test system via an external storage medium. This is useful in that it can replicate the kind of infection you might see via a USB drive or even a local network share, but it doesn’t accurately reflect everything going on. The fact that the malware threat samples have to be collected in advantage also means that static tests tend to assess how up-to-date malware detection engines’ signature libraries are, rather than the accuracy of their behavioural or heuristic detection.