Why is Test Advisory needed to set up a Testing Centre of Excellence?

 

The global IT landscape is in a state of flux due to the advent of new technologies and methodologies, changing customer preferences for better quality products, the emergence of newer cyber security threats, and rising competitiveness. To meet such challenges, enterprises should possess and ensure streamlined processes, quality software applications, quick decision-making, accelerated time-to-market, and a better customer feedback loop, among others. Traditional QA paradigms are woefully short to meet such challenges and do not have the capacity to keep pace with the new realities of the day. This is where a Testing Centre of Excellence (TCoE) can help enterprises to gain a holistic insight into the processes and operations. It can ensure the quality of software systems across the value chain, reduce operating costs, and quickly develop and deliver software applications that are customized to the needs of the market.

A TCoE can deliver proven results in terms of optimal performance, better alignment between IT and operations, better choice and usage of test automation tools, and increased QA efficiency across processes and functions. The testing centre of excellence can function as an integrated command centre using the latest testing methodology and practices, test automation tools, and metrics to foster efficiency into the testing environment. It allows the management to gain insights into quality across SDLC and take suitable risk-based deployment decisions. At the software testing centre of excellence, the team of specialists performs multiple roles and draws insights into the challenges and goals of software development, testing, and delivery.

Why does your organization need a test centre of excellence?

A testing centre of excellence can help an organization to achieve its quality testing goals, seamlessly and efficiently. Its need arises because:

·         The QA processes are aligned to specific project goals instead of the overall organizational goals.

·         Projects face high training costs due to the unavailability of QA specialists with proper domain knowledge.

·         The aim to reduce testing time without impacting the quality of systems.

·         Absence of a standardized QA process or methodology.

·         Projects suffer from defects and missed deadlines.

·         Use of dated QA testing trends instead of the latest ones.

·         Lack of continuous improvement in the Agile-DevOps mold.

·         Every project team reinvents the wheel instead of leveraging tools, components, and test scripts from a centralized repository.

Test advisory to set up a QA centre of excellence

The roadmap to set up a transformative TCoE may have the following elements.

Timeline and scope: Identify and define the activities, scope, and timelines for implementing the setup including the earmarking of transition, stabilization, and operational phases.

Goal setting: Set goals for activities covering areas like test automation, test environment, test processes, and governance.

Interface: Decide on the broad parameters and outcomes when the test centre of excellence interfaces with sundry quality initiatives, management, projects, and service providers.

Training: Assess the requirement of skills, identify resources followed by the hiring and training of such resources.

Core team: Since the QA process driven by an efficient and functional software testing centre of excellence would require proper control and management, a core team should be formed. The team comprising SMEs can be for areas like test automation, asset management, and governance, among others.

Tools: Identify the tools addressing the testing imperatives. Choose the tools based on their cost and maintainability.

Communication: Make sure the TCoE concept is backed by the management and every department in the organization is on-board. This is important for the success of this initiative.

Automation: All repeatable tasks should be automated and the reuse of test cases to the extent possible should be ensured in order to optimize cost and time.

Governance: Integrate the testing centre of excellence services into the IT structure of governance after defining the KPIs. Make sure to align the KPIs to the organizational and project objectives comprising the level of quality, cost optimization, flexibility, speed, and agility. The focus on the governance aspect means a continuous evaluation of the test processes, standards, and tools.

Conclusion

Delivering TCoE solutions can help organizations in reducing their cost of operations, fostering agility for the QA processes, and establishing a metrics-driven continuous improvement process, among others. Setting up a TCoE might seem a herculean task at the outset but with proper planning, investment in resources and tools, and training, the benefits can be visible in the long run. It can increase the overall quality of applications and reduce the time of delivery – all guided by a competent team of QA specialists. 

Article original Source:

https://www.sooperarticles.com/technology-articles/software-articles/why-test-advisory-needed-set-up-testing-centre-excellence-1786046.html

 

How to prepare for Security Testing

 

The advancements in digital technologies are matched by an increase in the incidences of cyber security. Threats from hackers are all-pervasive and it appears they can wreak havoc at their time and place of choosing. However, there are two sides to a coin. First, hackers seem to be one step ahead of software developers and have the technical wherewithal to break into the software architecture at will. On the other hand, most software applications are vulnerable to hacking as they have inadequate defences and do not mandatorily follow security testing in the SDLC. The result of not performing application security testing by many enterprises shows in the form of rising incidences of data breach.

According to statistics, around 7 million data records are compromised each day taking the annual figure to 2.55 billion (Source: Varonis). Also, the world economy is going to cough up around $6 trillion annually by 2021 on account of cybercrime damages (Source: Cybersecurity Ventures.) These statistics are alarming enough for every stakeholder to strengthen the cybersecurity measures. No one can hide behind the thought that ‘we are too insignificant for the hackers to attack us’ anymore. So, in the ultimate analysis, it is finally a choice between creating and implementing an application security testing strategy or waiting for the hackers to play havoc. 

Why security testing?

It is a type of testing in the SDLC where testers aim at identifying flaws or vulnerabilities in the architecture of a software application. Security testing ensures the application remains protected from cyber-attacks and continues to perform the intended functionalities. The six basic elements to be covered by the security testing services include confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, resilience, and non-repudiation.

With an increase in online transactions using web portals and mobile applications, cyber intruders are on the lookout for vulnerabilities in software. Thus, a dynamic application security testing ensures potential vulnerabilities are identified and plugged before the application reaches the end-users. Further, any software security testing exercise can pre-empt the following possibilities:

• Losing the trust of customers
• Downtime and latency faced by the application or system resulting in not meeting the delivery schedules
• Expenses on restoring services including taking backups etc
• Additional cost incurred in making the application secure against future attacks
• Legal suits filed by regulatory agencies, clients, or customers for not upholding adequate security measures

Types of security threats

There are many types of cyber security threats that hackers use to exploit the vulnerabilities in a web or mobile application.

SQL Injection: Malicious SQL statements are entered into an input field to get critical information from the database.

Privilege Elevation: Hackers use an account on the application to upgrade their privileges to a higher level.

Denial of Service (DoS): The hacker manipulates the system, application, or network to deny the availability of resources to legitimate users.

URL Manipulation: The process involves the manipulation of the URL query strings to capture critical information. It takes place when the application passes information between the client and server by using the HTTP GET method.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): This type of vulnerability allows hackers to inject client-side script into pages to trick users into clicking on the URL.

Devising a security testing strategy

To plan, prepare, and implement dynamic application security testing in the SDLC, the following approach can be followed.

Understanding the security architecture: Begin with understanding the IT architecture, business requirements, threats, and security objectives of the organization. Every factor or requirement needed to ensure PCI compliance should be considered during the planning phase.

Analysis of security architecture: Analyze the application’s security requirements including the vulnerabilities.

Classification of testing: Get information about the software application and network in terms of their hardware configuration, operating systems, and technology used. Thereafter, classify the security risks and vulnerabilities based on the aforementioned elements.

Threat modelling: Prepare a threat profile of the application based on the information collected for classification (mentioned above.)

Planning for the test: After identifying the vulnerabilities and security threats, prepare a test plan and traceability matrix to address them.

Selecting a tool: Test automation becomes critical to identify glitches or flaws, which otherwise cannot be done manually. To execute the test cases quickly, a reliable testing tool should be chosen.

Test case execution: Execute the test cases including the regression ones to identify defects, quickly, accurately, and consistently.

Documentation: Study the test reports generated by the test automation tool to understand the vulnerabilities, risks, open issues, and threats.

Conclusion

Security testing has become a critical requirement in the DevSecOps-led model of software development. It ensures the identification (and subsequent fixing) of vulnerabilities or security-related risks in any software application. It also enforces software applications’ adherence to established security protocols.

Original Article Source:
https://devdojo.com/hemanthkumar989/the-main-elements-of-security-testing

How to Build an Effective Digital Testing Strategy

 

An effective digital testing strategy is paramount to validate the functioning of a product or service and lend credibility to it in the market. It leads to faster identification of glitches and delivers superior user experiences.

Digital transformation is aimed at streamlining processes, improving the quality of products, reducing waste and delivering superior user experiences, among others. However, not all digital transformation efforts bear fruit as shown by the increasing number of failures of many start-ups. A major part of the problem is the way digital testing is conducted as an integral part of digital transformation. The end result of such half baked digital assurance testing is the release of shoddy products. When glitches are left unattended due to lack of monitoring during the testing process, the overall customer experience takes a hit. Consequently, the business enterprise in the middle of it suffers from financial losses. Since digital assurance and testing play a critical role in driving profitability for any enterprise, the focus should be on developing an ideal digital testing strategy.

Steps to develop an effective digital testing strategy

Merely blaming the result (poor quality product) will not do any good unless and until the process is set right with a robust strategy in place.

# Set up testing goals: Unless the goals are clear the path cannot be determined. To create an effective digital marketing strategy, begin by setting the QA goals related to operations, UX, functionality, regression, security, and others. Each testing process should be planned, defined, communicated, and properly documented. The strategy should be able to answer the following queries:

• Name and type of product to be tested
• Which part(s) of the product should be tested?
• How the parts should be tested – manually or automation?
• What should be the test metrics?
• What should be the start and end criteria?

# Form the test team: Post deciding on the type of tests to be done, it is time to form a team of QA specialists. The team members should be chosen based on their test expertise and knowledge of programming languages. The latter comes in handy for writing test automation scripts. Importantly, your test team members may have the best web design and UI skills but they need to be reoriented to test the user experience.

It is better to use testers who did not work on developing the product as they can bring a fresh perspective and look at things differently. For example, developers-cum-testers may think of a feature as intuitive since they have been using it for days whereas the same may be difficult for the end-user to understand. In the era of globalization, digital products should be tested for an international audience. So, ensure the usability testing is done by the native users to find the kind of issues that are location-specific.

# Specify when to test: Incorporating the testing process at the right stage in the SDLC is crucial to get effective results. It must be decided in advance whether to implement digital QA testing after the integration of a new feature, at every stage of the development process, or at the end of development. Remember, an effective QA strategy should be a combination of high intention, sincere efforts, intelligent direction, and skilful execution.

# Specify devices to test: Bugs or glitches do not spare specific devices and so, it is necessary to test as many devices as possible. Also, bugs may be partial to certain configurations. For example, there may not be any bugs in an Android phone with the latest OS update but may be in plenty in the older OS. And as the older Android device may be used by thousands of users, any bug can play havoc. Further, the market has thousands of devices with many OS variants and versions and it is practically impossible to test each one of them. Hence, it is important to select devices for testing that are used by most number of target users. This information can be obtained by conducting market and user tendency analysis.

# Scenario-based or exploratory testing: The former is about testing each function of the product based on some preset parameters. It is a good testing option to ensure the smooth execution of various functions. Exploratory testing, on the other hand, lets QA specialists find bugs while exploring the product or service.

Conclusion

In addition to the above steps, the bugs identified should be properly noted, described, tracked, analyzed, and fixed. Once the steps of digital QA and testing are selected, conducting digital testing shall be a breeze. And it is only through a robust testing mechanism that an organization can address the expectations of users and stay competitive.

Article original Source:

https://www.sooperarticles.com/technology-articles/software-articles/how-build-effective-digital-testing-strategy-1784046.html