The Importance of Security Testing Web Applications

In our day-to-day work, security testing is often overlooked, or even ignored at times. But, if you want to build a secure (and reliable) software system, you must take security testing seriously. The reason is simple: a system that is not secure can be the source of a majority of security problems that arise.

What Is Security Testing?

“Security testing” is an umbrella term that encompasses various types of security testing—physical, architectural, architectural, functional, regulatory, and other types of testing.

Typically, what are termed “security tests” also include other types of requirements tests. Those other types of testing include “functional testing” and “functional verification”.

A security test is typically a type of functional test that helps you identify bugs in your software by either finding a flaw in the design of the program itself, or identifying defects in the code that can give rise to security issues later.

The Security Testing Process

Testing of security requires the following steps:

Defining the requirements – Defining your security requirements is critical to performing successful security testing. The requirements are the specific things you want to test in your software. The process of reviewing the requirements and determining the level of risk associated with each of them is referred to as risk analysis. When the risk analysis is done, the requirements are narrowed down to those that are clearly understood and are deemed to be achievable.

Identifying all security risks – Once you’ve identified the requirements that meet your needs and can be tested, you must identify the security risks to those requirements and mitigate them. The risk identification process ensures that the weaknesses inherent in the requirements are identified before the requirement is tested. The risk reduction phase of the testing process creates vulnerabilities in the requirements that can be eliminated during testing.

Performing the initial risk analysis – Once you have identified all the security risks existing in your requirements, you must then perform the first step of the testing process, the risk analysis phase. This involves taking a fresh look at the requirements and identifying remaining uncertainties. The purpose of this step is to identify any vulnerabilities in the requirements that remain unknown and unexplained. This step is important because it makes sure all assumptions are verified and no additional risks are hidden from you. This process is also known as risk assessment.

Defining success goals – Once the risk identification phase has been completed, you must then use the same risk analysis techniques to create goals for success in testing. Goals are the specific things you want to learn about so that you can decide whether or not to continue the testing process. Goals are determined by the knowledge you gain during the risk reduction phase.

Determining the level of risk – To complete the testing process, you must then determine the level of risk associated with each of the requirements that you identified during the risk identification phase. This is based on the level of uncertainty that was identified in the risk identification phase. You must then determine the level of risk associated with each of those requirements. This process is known as risk assessment.

Defining the level of risk – Once you have determined the level of risk associated with each of the requirements, you must then define the acceptable level of risk associated with those requirements. This is done by determining the level of uncertainty present in those requirements.