It seems that like clockwork, software development and testing accidents make the news around the world every year and in varying degrees. While most of them offer a good laugh at their sheer comical nature, others prove to be catastrophic for most. Now while their ubiquitous nature of occurrence around the world may seem inevitable, what’s concerning is how often they are overlooked by a business’ internal hierarchy. This can potentially spell the end for most companies today.
On the off chance that these errors gain public attention, most penetration testing companies prefer to remain tightlipped over the causes. This might be put right down to a myriad of reasons but are usually in one among the 2 camps – to save their reputation after embarrassing accidents or to take care of software security integrity. This is often very true for enterprise software, government and banking apps and more recently, for penetration testing companies. And if you’re a software developer or tester, you’re probably already conversant in how bugs can slip through the cracks at any of the manifold stages of software testing.
Today, we’ll be discussing how your business can ensure how it deals with software accidents and perhaps more importantly, how you can mitigate them from the get-go:
#1: Applying a culture of testing in the workplace at every level
With the number of bugs and defects that slip through with each software release, it is clear that software testing cannot be entirely flawless. This is still the case even with the best QA teams and companies at your disposal. The simple matter of fact is that your code is bound to have errors. And with the increase in complexity in modern software, applications and websites, this is more true than ever. This is because testing hundreds of thousands of lines of code, written by dozens of engineers is an impossible task even for the best testers.
This becomes more of a problem if bugs and defects are less evident and seemingly harmless. Your testing team could spend days tracking them down and it eventually becomes a frustrating endeavour. This is why the requirement to implement a culture of testing at every level in the company is important.
The goal should be to start testing once the developers turn in the code after completion and this should be conducted by them too. They should only fully hand over the code once they find no apparent errors or defects within it.
#2: Users come first
Most QA penetration testing companies know that insufficient testing can cause most of the software bugs and errors your users will unearth. And too much testing can cause your product to be delayed. Excessive testing is often done by “code cowboys.” These code cowboys are developers that find it easier to throw out code in an effort to reduce technical debt. This is what results when software teams ramp up the delivery of functionality or software that needs to be refactored later. To simplify, these engineers tend to focus on getting the project to completion in the shortest time possible instead of prioritising perfect code.
What your teams can do instead of this is to give extra emphasis to the people who will be using your product – the users. Because remember, while your development team is tasked with developing the code, users would need to interact with it regularly. It’s important for your engineers to understand what part of the software your users will interact with most and test those before anything else. If your users don’t care about something, you don’t necessarily want to make it a priority in testing.
#3: Warn your users before conducting live testing
During a software crisis, a host of industry best practices tends to go right out the window due to the heat of the moment. Often times you’ll find that new errors are reported that can be detrimental to the continued usage of your application or software. Severing connection for your users to fix it can cause a lot of downtimes that goes unappreciated at best by your customers. Times like these are when you should be prepared with a backup when performing software tests. This ensures your users don’t have to deal with service interruptions while your team works to sort any defects or bugs out.
Penetration Testing Techniques in 2021 