What is security testing?

Security testing is a type of software testing that discovers threat, risks and vulnerabilities in a software application. It also helps to prevent any malicious attack from the intruders. In security testing we ensure that the software or an application must be free from any threat or risk that can damage the system and can cause loss.

Main reasons to perform security testing:

1. To identify possible threats in the system and encounter them so system should not stop working
2. Detect all possible security risk so that all the data remains safe
3. To help developers fixed security problem by coding

Principles of security testing:

There are six principles of security testing, and are as follow:

1. Availability – The data must be retained by official person and will be ready to use whenever we need it
2. Integrity – The main objective is to permit receiver to control the receiver data given by the system
3. Authorization – It is the process of defining that client is permitted to perform action and receive the services
4. Confidentiality – It is security process the leak of data from outsiders
5. Authentication – The process of confirming the person to allow access to the private information or the system
6. Non – repudiation – To ensure that the conveyed message has been sent and received to the person who was supposed to send and receive

Key areas of security testing:

Following areas are the most important to perform security testing:

1. System software security – To evaluate vulnerabilities of application based software such as operating system and data base system
2. Network security – To check the weakness of network structure, such as policies and resources
3. Server side application security – To ensure that server encryption and its tools are sufficient to protect the software
4. Client side application security – To ensure that any intruders cannot operate on browser or tool which is used by customer

Types of security testing:

There are mainly seven types of security testing are there. They are as follow:

1. Vulnerability scanning – To scan a system to detect vulnerability pattern
2. Security scanning – To identify network and system weakness
3. Penetration testing – To examine a system for potential risk and threat from malicious hacker that attempt to hack the system
4. Risk assessment- To endorse controls and measures to minimize the risk
5. Security auditing – Its and internal inspection of application and operating system for security defects
6. Ethical hacking – To expose security flaws in the organization system
7. Posture assessment – It consist of security scanning, ethical hacking and risk assessment to provide complete posture of organization

How to perform security testing?

The security testing needed to be done in initial stage of SDLC as after execution stage it will cost more. Security testing is done parallel in each stage if software development life cycle (SDLC).

1. Requirement stage – In this stage security analysis of business needs are done.
2. Design stage – Here, security test for risk exploration of design and security test at development of test plan are done
3. Development stage – White box testing is done along with static and dynamic testing
4. Testing – In this stage vulnerability scanning is done along with black box testing
5. Implementation stage – Here, vulnerability testing is done along with penetration testing
6. Maintenance stage – Impact analysis is done of impact areas

Security testing tools:

• Acunetix
• Owasp
• Wireshark
• ZAP
• SonarQube

Conclusion:

For an application or the software, it is must to perform security testing to make sure that sensitive information is private. In this type of testing, tester plays a role of hacker and handle the system to find security related bugs. Security testing plays very vital role in software development life cycle as ignoring this can cause the failure of the system.