A Short Guide on Software Security Testing Methodologies

Software security testing methodologies help analyze and test the source code of a software product for vulnerabilities. The goal of software security testing is to determine whether a software system is secure and to find and fix any vulnerabilities before they are released into the production environment.

This kind of software testing can be automated or manual. Manual testing requires the tester to have hands-on experience with software development frameworks, such as IDEs and continuous integration tools. Security testers must also have an understanding of interpreted languages and build systems. They must also have experience with security scanning tools and secure SDLC.

Software Quality and Testing Essentials You Need to Know:

DAST (dynamic application security testing) is a technique that identifies and fixes vulnerabilities in software. This type of testing is triggered by changes to a software's source code repository. However, software quality and testing can take a while to find and fix these vulnerabilities. Hence, it's advisable to prioritize fixing them.

DAST tools can identify vulnerabilities that SAST scans can't. In addition to that, DAST has a lower false positive rate than SAST. For example, a DAST tool may be able to detect Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that aren't visible in a SAST scan.

Using a combination of manual and automated code reviews is a great way to achieve maximum security. It's a good idea to compare the results of SAST and DAST to get a full understanding of the vulnerability vulnerabilities.

While SAST tests all of the code required to compile the application, DAST only scans the code that's actually running. Because of this, it's not effective for detecting runtime-related security risks. Instead, it's most effective for identifying and analyzing the vulnerabilities that are present in the source code before it's compiled.

Black Box Testing & Gray Box Testing:

Black box testing is an opaque approach to software security testing. The tester adopts an outsider's perspective to evaluate the security of the application. Since the only observable inputs are those that the tester sees, the tester is forced to think like a real user, instead of a code creator. By doing this, the tester can document any application security issues that they discover.

Gray box testing combines both white box and black box techniques. A tester performs bulk real-time transactions to see how the application performs under load conditions. They can verify that each user account has unique access. Also, they check if open access points allow secure actions. To make sure that all of the access points have been used, the tester should access the applications from various machines.