Perform a Successful Functional Testing of your Mobile App

 

 

A successful mobile app functional testing should include steps such as identifying the testing requirements, preparing a test plan and determining the right cases to automate, considering the right user conditions, and analyzing the test reports.

 The ubiquity of smartphones has brought to the fore the importance of mobile applications in conducting various activities. Among these are paying utility bills, playing games, listening to music, communicating on social media, booking tickets, buying from eCommerce stores, and many others. However, alongside the convenience and ease-of-use facilities offered by these applications, there is also the danger of malware or cybercriminals stealing data and money. Further, in the highly competitive world of mobile apps, the success of such apps depends on the level of user experience they provide. To ensure the same, mobile apps must be subjected to mobile application testing. And among various types of testing, mobile app functional testing remains fundamental to the testing regime.

What is functional testing for mobile apps?

This type of mobile app testing ensures the application addresses the specific requirements and user needs. The test is planned by keeping the end-user perspective in mind and assesses the responsiveness and working of every feature in the application as expected. It holds good for every mobile application – iOS, Android, or Windows and type – Native, Hybrid, and Mobile Web. During any mobile app functional testing exercise, the following questions are generally asked     

• Can the end-user perform this activity? 
•  Are all features of the app working as they were designed to be? 
• Are the features properly integrated to deliver the results?

The mobile app testing strategy to validate the features and functionalities is designed to be conducted for every update of the application. Here, test automation can be adopted to test the basic features. Let us understand how to conduct successful functional testing for mobile apps.

# Identify the testing requirements: The foremost requirement to plan a mobile app testing strategy is to find out the elements needed for the test. These may include the user commands, processes, screens, and integrations that will be part of the testing exercise. Here, inputs from both development and operations teams can be included to understand the requirements and their order of preference. Also, the test team should know the target audience - whether it is the consumer or entrepreneur etc.

# Prepare a test plan: This includes jotting down the scope and objectives of testing, the schedule, and the resources needed to conduct the test. The resources would include test specialists, hardware, and software tools. Thereafter the test team should prioritize the test cases to be developed as not every test is similar in significance. Also, the application functionalities should be verified to check if they meet the business requirements and do not develop issues in case of interruptions. For example, while operating the application should there be any incoming call, the application should go into the background and allow the user to attend to the call. And it is only after attending the call that the application comes to the foreground.

# Test automation: Ideally this should be included in the test plan creation phase. However, its critical importance in the scheme of things needed it to be treated as a separate section. Even though test automation improves the quality of the application and reduces the time-to-market, it should be planned sensibly. For example, there is no need to automate a test just for the heck of it should the same can be done effectively at a lower cost through manual testing. However, from a long term perspective, test automation can accrue significant cost savings should it be planned and executed with the right support.

# Test execution in real user conditions: A mobile user may encounter several conditions while operating the app – out of network, low memory, and high user traffic etc. Hence, such conditions should be considered during mobile application testing wherein various functional requirements are tested.

# Test reporting: The test management tools should be such that they generate suitable error reports in the form of a dashboard. The same should be made available to every stakeholder for the latter to understand and analyze the reports.

Conclusion

With mobile apps becoming a significant part of the users’ digital activities, they should be functional and responsive at all times. To ensure their functionalities meet the user expectations, mobile app functional testing should be conducted by considering all elements, requirements, and conditions. 

 

Original Article Source:

https://huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/how-to-conduct-successful-functional-testing-for-mobile-apps/
 

Choose the Best Web Application Security Testing Tools

 

Digitization has made the world a small place where communication and exchange of information take place in the blink of an eye. The myriad advantages of the internet are not lost on anyone as individuals, groups, entities, enterprises, and governments are leveraging it to achieve their objectives. What used to be in the realm of science fiction a few decades back has become a definitive reality with digital interactivity taking the world to a different plane altogether. However, notwithstanding the advancements in the field of digitization and its benefits, the concurrent rise in cybercrime has become a matter of abject concern.

Not a single day passes when the spectre of cybercrime does not extract its pound of flesh. If we go by statistics then the global average cost of data breaches in 2019 amounted to $3.92 (Source: Statista). Also, the global cybersecurity market has been pegged at $140.2 billion in 2020, which is likely to earn revenue to the tune of $354.7 billion by 2027. These figures show the humongous impact of cybercrime on the global economy and how enterprises are rising to the challenge by investing in cybersecurity measures.

It has been observed that hackers using malware mostly exploit the inherent vulnerabilities in software. And mostly the vulnerabilities at the application layer lead to software breaches (around 84 percent.) To address the rising challenge of cybercrime and establish trust among the end-users, enterprises need to pursue application security testing rigorously. As per software security testing, various automation tools are in the offing to identify the glitches and vulnerabilities existing in a web application. And with hacking techniques becoming more sophisticated, web applications need to be secured by following comprehensive web app security testing.

Why application security testing?

It ensures the security of data and information present within a web application. A successful web application security testing exercise protects data against malicious threats and pre-empts situations like a data breach, system latency, and sudden application crashes, among others. It checks for the validation of procedures like authentication, authorization, availability, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. The objectives of conducting software application security testing are:

·         Prevent inconsistent performance of the application

·         Retain the trust of end-users

·         Prevent the breach of important data and information

·         Save the application from any unexpected failure or downtime

·         Save costs towards fixing security issues

Top web application security testing tools

There are many open-source and paid security testing tools to identify the vulnerabilities or glitches in a web application. These should be chosen keeping in view the specific security challenges and business requirements.

# Arachni: This open-source security testing tool is suitable for both penetration testers and admin. It is capable of identifying security issues such as local and remote file inclusion, SQL injection, invalidated redirect, and XSS injection. Being instantly deployable, this modular and high-performing tool is built on the Ruby framework and supports multi-platforms.

# Klocwork: This static code analysis tool can check for reliability, security, and safety issues in programming languages such as C#, C, Java, and C++. It can be easily integrated with tools like Jenkins and Jira using specific plugins. It can analyze the source code in real-time, prolong the life of the software under test, and simplify peer code reviews.

# SQLMap: The free to use automation tool can detect the presence of vulnerabilities in the form of SQL injections in the database of web applications. Its powerful testing engine is capable of identifying SQL injection techniques such as error-based, stacked queries, Boolean-based blind, UNION query, out-of-band, and time-based blind. It is often leveraged by the application security testing services and supports databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

# Grabber: Developed in Python, this lightweight security testing tool is capable of scanning web applications including individual websites and forums. It can uncover vulnerabilities like SQL injection, file inclusion, cross-site scripting, simple AJAX verification, and backup file verification. Among its highlights is its support for JS code analysis, portability, and the ability to generate a stats analysis file.

# Nogotofail: This lightweight and easy-to-use network security testing tool can detect vulnerabilities related to TLS injection, SQL injection, MiTM attacks, and SSL certificate verification. Developed by Google, it can be set up as a router, VPN server, or proxy.

# W3af: Developed on Python, this popular web application security testing tool can identify over 200 types of security issues such as blind SQL injection, cross-site scripting, buffer overflow, insecure DAV configurations, and CSRF, among others. Its key highlights include the availability of an intuitive GUI interface, support for authentication, easy to start, and the ability to generate output on a console, email, or file.

# SonarQube: This open-source tool can be used to measure the quality of a web application’s source code. Written in Java, it can analyze the codes written in more than 20 programming languages. Easily integrated with CI tools like Jenkins, SonarQube can highlight issues in red (severe) or green (low-risk ones.) It offers both command prompt (for advanced users) and an interactive GUI (for new testers.) The vulnerabilities identified by this tool include HTTP response splitting, DoS attacks, cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and memory corruption, among others.

# Burp suite: This web application security testing tool can identify more than 100 vulnerabilities in the form of XSS, SQL injection, and Xpath injection, among others. It allows the scanning of an entire application or a specific segment of a website, or an individual URL. The tool offers custom advisories for all detected vulnerabilities including on their severity, file path, confidence type, etc.

# Wapiti: This open-source security testing tool offers support for both POSTHTTP and GET type attack methodologies. It can expose vulnerabilities including file disclosure, database injection, CRLF injection, command execution detection, XSS injection, ssrf, or shellshock, among others.

# Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP): This open-source and multi-platform supporting security testing tool can find vulnerabilities in a web application. Written in Java, it can identify vulnerabilities such as private IP disclosure, cookie not HTTPOnly flag, application error disclosure, missing anti-CSRF tokens, and SQL and XSS injections, among others. With a rest-based API, the tool uses AJAX spiders and supports authentication.

Conclusion

The use of application security testing tools has become mandatory given the rising graph of cybersecurity issues. However, care must be taken to choose a tool that addresses the security testing requirements from both short and long term perspectives.