Why is Security Testing Before Launch Essential for Any Software?‍

Making an application or a website? Then, don’t forget to take into account the measures to prevent data breaches or loss before launching it. So, how can you do that? The answer is by implementing security testing techniques. In this post, you will know everything about security testing such as techniques, benefits, methods, etc. Therefore, to know everything in detail, read below. 

So, what is security testing?

Security testing is one of the testing methods to find out any security vulnerabilities and loopholes. These security issues and vulnerabilities are majorly found in different areas such as cloud infrastructure, web applications, blockchain, etc. Both manual and automated tools are available to do security testing. 

Why is security testing so important? 

Security testing is a crucial process to evaluate the security system of the software. With the rapid increase in digital development, making websites and applications have become more complex and challenging. New businesses entering the market have significantly increased the competition and security threat simultaneously. 

Therefore, improving security is one of the challenging tasks. It is one of the highly essential steps to ensure the reliability and security of the software. 

Security Testing Types

You cannot compromise with security issues. To give you the best coverage, there are different ways or techniques to improve security testing. Let’s have a look. 

#1- Penetration Testing 

First of all, penetration testing is one of the important measures that highlight the weaknesses of the software. It is an effective method to identify the damage intensity imposed by the attackers. To conclude, the testing and development team analyzes the requirements to improve the security layers of the software. 

#2- Vulnerability Testing

So, this is an automated process that pinpoints the vulnerability consisting in the network or software. There is no necessity to do the vulnerability scan when introducing any changes. Apparently, it is an effective approach to discover the vulnerabilities and mitigate them on time before launch. 

#3- Source Code Review

It is the process to verify that the code meets the security specifications by analyzing the vulnerabilities. Security experts are responsible to conduct this review to review the security aspect of the software. The experts identify and report functional and security issues. Hence, product quality and security improve incredibly. 

#4- Risk Assessment 

The risk assessment is a particular process in which the tester identifies the threats and risks. It saves the IT system and other crucial assets of your organization from leaking. Thus, identifying the risks helps in taking countermeasures and protecting the data from potential malware attacks. Hence, this is why risk assessment is a crucial step to managing everything smoothly. 

#5- Security Auditing 

The security audit involves assessing and reviewing the network or application. This is done to check if they comply with the regulations, standards as well as company policy. It is a detailed and systematic examination of the network or system and report if found. Any third party or internal team carries out this task. 

Security Testing Methods

A. Dynamic Application Security Testing

Both automation and manual tools are integrated to find security issues. Here, the main task is to simulate external attacks and measure the outcomes. In this, DAST easily inspects the exploitable flaws while the software is running. It uses various security attacks to test the software with various parameters and monitoring tools. 

B. Interactive Application Security Testing 

Secondly, IAST, or Interactive Application Security Testing is an advanced approach in the field of security testing. This process comprises top-class methods to evaluate software security. 

C. Static Application Security Testing 

The SAST tool concentrates on examining the application files and source code. This process can take significant time to effectively find out the vulnerabilities and security flaws. It requires both automated and manual tools to identify the errors or flaws in the configuration and source code. Furthermore, SAST works at a separate abstraction level compared to the typical vulnerability scan. 

Why Must You Do Security Testing? 

Here are the following reasons to understand why Security testing is so important. 

#1- Lesser Downtime

In today’s lightning-fast world, time is money. Thus, any delay in production caused by security errors can be a major threat. To deal with that, it is better to make your product market ready with security testing. Hence, easily detecting bugs will ultimately benefit in preventing downtime. 

#2- Low Costs

As soon as you start improving the security issues, all your problems start mitigating. You can save a lot of money related to remediation, and recovery to improve security breaches. Moreover, the costs are also related to technologies and tools such as vulnerability scanners, and others. 

#3- Establish Trust Among Customers

Apart from everything, security testing is a prominent technique to establish customer trust. It improves the company's reputation and expands the customer base with a better security system.

#4- Compliance with the Security Laws

Several security standards such as GPR, HIPPA, and PCI-DSS, are important for every company to follow. They need to do essential testing and audits for their security systems. If you don’t follow, then you may have to pay hefty fines. So, ensure that your company adheres to the security laws. 

Tools Required for Security Testing

• W3AF- It stands for Web Application Attack and Audit Framework. As the name suggests, this tool is a framework comprising specific modules which are designed for easier configuration. You can use the framework through automated or manual processes accessing API. 

• OWASP ZAP- It is a tool for vulnerability management and assessment for web applications. It is essentially used by the developers who build applications for improving internal security tests. 

• Wireshark- Thirdly, this tool is for analyzing the network traffic. It monitors the traffic which allows you to inspect what kind of traffic your system attracts. 

• NMAP- So, this is an open-source tool also used for monitoring network connections. Primarily, it scans the networks and helps in monitoring the services, hosts, and intrusions in your software. 

• SonarQube- This is an open-source platform particularly designed for inspecting code quality. It performs automatic reviews along with static code analysis to find out code smells, bugs, security vulnerabilities, etc. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, no company small or big cannot compromise with security issues. It is better to mitigate the errors with regular inspection before it turns into a big loss.