Why Should Organizations Go Agile in Their Testing Approach

With the day to day change in market aspects, advent of progressive technologies, ever-changing customer likings, and developing global standards and compliance requirements, agile development practices are moving into the mainstream. 

We are living in the world where everyone wants to get ahead and reach their business heights. This is only possible if you are following the proper methods and today, many web app development teams are in the practice of shifting to agile methods in order to move towards iterative development.

Shifting to agile methods is a challenging task, and it needs extreme concentration towards quality and improved teamwork. Most firms often fail to implement agile methodology in a proper manner, and this results in the main reason for agile tasks failing to deliver high quality software to end client.

Why Should Prefer Agile Methodologies

• Agile is an iterative, team-based technique to software development. This technique highlights the rapid delivery of a project in complete functional constituents. Rather than creating tasks and schedules, all time is “time-boxed” into phases called “sprints.” 
• Instead of a sequential design process, the Agile methodology follows an incremental approach.
• In an agile environment, the software programmers and testers have to work together to confirm that the software quality is upheld. The collaboration endorses continuous iteration of development and testing through the entire software development life cycle (SDLC).

Understanding Important Benefits of Agile Testing Methodology

1. Rapid Feedback

In an agile environment, programmers and testers work as a single team. So the whole team is responsible for software quality. The testers can write unit tests each time a new feature or functionality is added to the web application, and test the new code almost straightway.

Additional, they can easily provide prompt feedback to the programmers about flaws or bugs in the application software. Based on the feedback received from the testers, the programmers can fix the bugs in the same build. So there is no need to wait.

2. Better and Continuous Communication

By following the agile methodologies, everyone is connected with each other as it’s a team based method.  The testers can simply notify the programmer about the bug and vice-versa.  The daily scrum meetings additional help the whole team to emphasis on identifying and fixing essential topics in advance. 

3. Easy to Eliminate Major Defects

In agile development, it’s very easy for programmer to remove or fix the errors as the bugs are identified immediately after the coding phase. With this programmer can instantly work on the major bugs. And this also helps in handling security testing services. 

4. Easy to Incorporate Changes

To acquire benefits of waterfall testing model, a business analyst has to define the business desires from the start of the project. But software developers now have to build applications based on frequently-changing business needs. So, it becomes impossible for the managers to outline the business needs clearly before the project begins.

But this can only happen when business adapt agile methodologies to incorporate changes and enhancements required by the client.

When Should You Use Agile methodology?

1. When rapid production is more important than the quality of the product.

2. When customers will be capable to alter the scope of the project.

3. When there isn’t a clear picture of what the final product should look like.

Penetration Testing Best Practices And Challenges For Organizations

Companies invest heavily in security plans with the latest solutions and infrastructures; however, without testing, there is no plan to determine their effectiveness in case of an attack. Taking the most recent BBC example, where they had a server hacked by a Russian cybercriminal.

As the FTP server is connected to most other servers on any provided network, somebody gaining access to it is free to surf the whole network. Such vulnerability of internal information is clearly a big risk for all and any companies. This security breach serves beyond proof the crucial demand of penetration testing.

Penetration testing

Penetration testing is nothing but an enactment of a potential hacker to recognize the vulnerabilities of a business security system, both internal and external.

Otherwise called Pen testers, look for security loopholes in the industry and instead of reporting on them they dig deeper into the system for further potential flaws. You can also find best penetration testing services provider via various online resources.

And with the rise of cloud-based services, compliance has become a rising concern. Here comes penetration testing as a reliable program to test and certify the company’s security best practices.

Make the most of the Pen Test

For an efficient penetration test, the definition of probable attack situations is necessary for addition to the coverage of industry frameworks such as WASC, OWASP, CERT, and SANS.

Documentation of the penetration testing purpose and exclusion (if any) of the laws of engagement is necessary, which means the restriction on duration and acceptable working hours unusually if the target application environment is alive composition system.

The credible attack scenarios must be based on the threat profile of the target company application platform, which must cover: idea of the business application, operational criticality of the application, analysis of data processed or stored by the application, mode of access to the application and related access control measures to defend the business information and information processing system.

Penetration testing must deliver reproducible results with supporting evidence by following a repeatable methodology that is established and documented.

The tools, scripts, and manual techniques must be proven and evaluated prior utilizing them in live production environments. Revalidation of identified security findings from automated tools through manual assessment and alternate scripts or tools is necessary in order to minimize the reporting of false positives or negatives.

Top Penetration Testing Challenges for Companies

 · Assuming that the adjustment of vulnerabilities identified in pen testing will assure the total security of the system

 · Approving the target and regularity of pen test

 · Determining the risk associated with disclosure of important data and failure of the syste

 · Understanding differentiation between penetration testing and vulnerability scanning

 · Determining what type of pen testing is needed

 · Determining the test coverage

What is external and Internal Penetration Test?

External penetration testing is a test that helps you verify the safety of your system through the internet connection from outside IP address. 

If you have a website then a hacker can try to get all important information that you are trying to hide through the internet.

Internal Test, on the other hand, is when a hacker will try to penetrate the organization's security using the penetration testing services provider computer. 

This will help you control the security system from inside jobs, both intentional and not intentional. The motive of this test is to check your organization's employees to have access to all of the data.