Security Testing - The Challenges Faced by Testers

With the advancement of technology it has provided us with many benefits as well as helped us to lead a life of luxury and ease. It has also helped in diminishing the distance between the people and increased chances of communication. However, like all good things, this advancement too has certain negativities which are majorly looming up on us like the security threats that are becoming stronger and stronger. This makes security testing very important in the current days.

1. Very Frequent Changes: With the ever increasing demands of the customers, the developers have to bring about frequent updates and changes in the application they are developing. This has to be combined with the regular testing of the software to check if the security is top notch even after the changes that have been brought about. Previously testing needed to be done on the alpha and the final product, but this frequent testing poses to be a real challenge. These changes make all year round testing compulsory.
2. Too Many Pages: With the development of better and more detailed applications, contents which require testing also increases. This in turn increases the time required for testing these detailed applications. Automation tools may ease this challenge faced by the testers but it only accounts for certain vulnerabilities of the applications the rest of which has to be detected by manual process in order to be rectified. This challenge can be somewhat avoided by keeping special focus on the various threats which appears again and again on the application which may help in cutting down the cost of the whole security testing process and ease the challenges.
3.  Lots of Privilege Levels: Prevention of privilege escalation via holes in the application is one of the major jobs of the security testing process. With the increase of privileges provided to the customers the number of security tests applicable to the applications automatically increases. Increased number of tests will result in increased time invested as well as increase focus for each of the application which becomes a major issue for the testers. The problem intensifies when the automated tools fails to find the holes which further escalates the already provided privileges and time consuming manual testing procedures are required for it.
4. A Lot of Ajax: Introduction of Ajax poses to be a serious security threat in the current days. Ajax enables the users of the various applications to request for various little changes in the same. Each of these various little requests allows tempering of the available security changes as these changes could bring about various kinds of cracks in the system. This leads to constant security testing of application by the testers. Another major problem is the fact that although these problems may be related to the old school ones, tools for Ajax security testing are still developing.
5. Tools Haven’t Matured: The most prevalent challenge which is faced by the testers during security testing of the application is the lack of tools which will be capable of performing automated security tests on the applications that are being developed. The automated tools which are available are only partially capable of detecting the security breaches or loopholes present on the application. This compels the testers to perform the various security tests by the old school manual testing process which requires more labor as well as greater amount of time for the completion and detection of flaws.

These are some of the major challenges that the testers are facing when it comes to security testing of the various software. 

What is the Need to Test Your Retail Apps Frequently?

It is the age of technology and everything we do is related to technology or dependent on it in some way. The advent of technology has hugely aided the way that people used to buy things. Most people are now hooked on to internet shopping which is conducted online via the numerous mobile shopping apps or retail apps that are present. It allows them to browse and order the things they need sitting at home or at office or on the go and the ordered product gets delivered right at their door step. This helps in saving a lot of time and is convenient for most people who are super busy in their lives or for people who are away from their home and require to deliver the products.

One of the best things about conducting business in an age which is primarily mobile centric is the fact that they have a tool for almost everything that is needed. Be it streamlining certain business opportunities or increasing the productivity of the retail app or creating an easier user interface for your customers to deal with, you get a tool for everything.

However to ensure that your app is up and running it is very important that you need to test your app before launching it so that you can ensure complete satisfaction on the customers’ end. It will also ensure that your app increases the profitability of your business based on the ease and productivity and speed as well as security of using your app. It is not enough to test your app only before you launch it. Retail apps should be tested frequently even after being launched. This is due to the fact that the retail apps are used by a huge number of customers each day which makes it prone to development of bugs which may cause problems in the functionality of the app.

The retail apps are usually multi tier in nature and are connected to payment gateways and banking apps so that the customers can make payment of the products they have bought.  This ensures that your app should have top notch security facilities so that it can avoid any kind of fraud that may cause harm to the customers as well as to your reputation. This is one of the major reasons to keep testing the retail apps frequently so that the security facility of the app is never compromised. It also has to safe keep the personal details filled in by your customers while operating your retail app.

With the advancement of the technology you also need to include more and more features in your retail apps in order to enrich the shopping experience of your customers. This also initiates the process of frequent testing of your retail app to make sure that the prevailing functions are in sync with the new ones and work perfectly with the new functions that are included in the retail app. Also your retail app will have varied amount of traffic on each day which will obviously peak during the holidays and occasions when people are prone to exchanging gifts. Frequent load testing of the retail app will make sure that your app doesn’t snag under pressure and even if it does, it can bounce back to its normal functionality as soon as possible without causing much distress to your customers.

We hope to have clarified the need to test your retail apps frequently. It will help you to maintain a healthy app and a loyal customer base.