Best Practices on How To Perform Security Testing

0 4 3 minutes read

The software industry has a strong reputation and a presence in practically every sector. Most organisations use IT solutions and web-based tools to run and sustain their operations. Banking, payments, stock trading, buying and selling, and a variety of other activities are now conducted digitally. The growth of the digital industry has made security testing critical.

Despite all of the hype about integrating security into continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows, many organisations still have separate DevOps and security teams. Unsurprisingly, security lags in DevOps setups. According to a recent 451 Research poll of 350 IT decision makers, half of all DevOps teams have yet to implement app security into their CI/CD workflows, while being well aware of the importance of doing so. Though DevOps teams are now working on larger projects and releasing software faster than ever before, they sometimes do so without a defined strategy for incorporating security into the process.

This article will walk you through the best practices for performing security testing. Check out our software quality assurance course.

Table of Contents

Test The Accessibility

Access security should be your first priority for ensuring the safety of your company and its consumers. Authentication and authorization are both part of accessibility. You determine who has access and how much access is granted to an authenticated person. This helps to keep your data protected from internal and external breaches. To execute the accessibility test, you must assess the roles and responsibilities of employees in your firm. Hire a qualified tester for the job. He or she will create various user accounts with distinct roles. Security testing on those produced accounts will help to ensure the security level in terms of accessibility. The same test can contain password quality, default login capacities, captcha test, other password, and login related tests.

Test The Protection Level of Data

The security of your data relies on:

Data Visibility and Usability
Data storage

Data visibility refers to how much data people can see, whereas data storage refers to the security of your database. Proper security testing is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of data storage. However, you must test first to identify vulnerabilities. A skilled tester may check the database for all types of vital data, including user accounts, passwords, billing, and more. It is critical that the database stores all relevant data. The transfer of data should also be encrypted. The qualified tester also examines how easily the encrypted material may be decrypted.

Test For Malicious Script

Hackers use XSS and SQL injection to compromise a website. A malicious script is injected into a site’s system, giving the hacker control or manipulation over the hacked website. A tester can guarantee your site is safe from these methods. The tester can determine the maximum lengths for the input fields. This restriction prevents a hacker from including these dangerous programs.

Test The Access Points

Collaboration is the norm in today’s corporate world. Many businesses work together on a digital level to provide joint services. For instance, a stock trading software has to provide continual access to the newest data to the users and new visitors as well. However, this free access increases the possibility of an unwelcome breach. To protect against such attacks, a tester can inspect the app’s entry points. The expert tester checks and guarantees that all access requests come from legitimate IP addresses or applications. If not, the app system should have the ability to refuse those requests.

Test The Session Management

A web session contains all of the response transactions that occur between your web server and the user’s browser. Testing session management entails a variety of operations, such session expiry after a specific inactive duration, maximum termination lifespan, session end time once a user signs out, and others.

Test The Error Handling

Testing the error codes is also necessary. This covers error codes 408, 400, 404, and others. The tester can navigate to such pages and check that no vital data or information is there. This helps to ensure that all of the data shown on error pages is secure and cannot be used by hackers. This test also includes a check of the stack traces, which potential hackers can use to breach.

Test For Other Functionalities

Other capabilities that need to be tested include file uploads and payments. These functions require extensive testing. Any harmful files should be banned. The tester should also check for payment-related vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows, insecure storage, password guessing, and other concerns. A competent tester can offer additional tests based on your business model. Conducting the tests as described will assist you in ensuring the complete security of your internet presence.