How Can UK, NZ, & Australia Gear up for the Upcoming Tech Challenges?

When you look at the software disasters, glitches, or breaches that have occurred in the course of 2017, there is one thought that scares each one of us, ‘the threat is all over us, and no one is spared’. The quantum of menace can differ from region to region, or from one country to another, but the impact is all-pervasive. Enterprises have gone global, so the impact of any good or evil happening around reaches everywhere, in every time zone. The year 2017 has been a clear witness to these growing global instances, which have gone beyond just USA and Canada.

The ransomware attack hit NHS England and organizations across the UK, along with various other pockets globally. An attack that occurred due to certain vulnerabilities found within the Microsoft operating systems that were installed across millions of systems in the world. Hence, a story about a glitch in a software that is operational not just in one country, but across innumerable global organizations.

Another one on the crisis chart is the incident with Verizon, where about 14 million Verizon subscribers got affected by a data breach, including even the ones who had contacted the customer service in a span of 6 months. You might also remember a vastly reported incident where the flights got delayed and passengers across Europe, Asia and America got stranded at airports when a widely used software crashed.

Last March, Bitcoin, the most sought-after decentralized cryptocurrency got a setback due to two software failures during the same month. It was due to a software bug that made over 100 Bitcoin Unlimited nodes vanish from the network completely. Speaking of catastrophes, a disastrous glitch affected five Australian hospitals during the application of security patches that were designed to deal with potential future cyber-attacks. It took almost two week to recover from this Cairns Hospital security patch disaster.

Gartner mentions in its Security spending report forecasts that while “Regulatory compliance and data privacy have been stimulating spending on security during the past three years, in the US (with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Overseas Citizenship of India) but most recently in Europe around the General Data Protection Regulation coming into force on 28^th May 2018, as well as in China with the Cybersecurity Law that came into effect in June 2016. These regulations translate into increased spending, particularly in data security tools, privileged access management and SIEM.”

What does the Software Testing market say?

Technavio’s market research report states that, the global pure play software testing services market is expected to grow rapidly and will post a CAGR of more than 19% during the forecast period (2017-2021).

At the same time, Gartner shares a perspective on Security Testing. Ruggero Contu, Research Director at Gartner mentions, “Overall, a large portion of security spending is driven by an organization’s reaction toward security breaches as more high profile cyberattacks and data breaches affect organizations worldwide. Cyberattacks such as WannaCry and NotPetya, and most recently the Equifax breach, have a direct effect on security spend, because these types of attacks last up to three years.”

The disruption that 75,000 passengers of a large airline from U.K. faced due to a software failure, or a massive attack by a ransomware on institutional systems, are events that clearly indicate the growing need of organizations across UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand to safeguard themselves from the obvious and not-so-obvious threats.

1.      Continuous Integration and Delivery

The idea of Continuous Integration (CI) and Delivery (CD) has changed the course of software development and application development. While a software needs an update every day or maybe every hour (as per the business needs), CI/CD makes this possible and dependable. Evolving and flexible methodologies such as Agile testing, DevOps, and Shift-Left have made this possible, with some evident outcomes. This makes it possible for every business to deploy change effectively and for every business process to function effortlessly.

2.      There is no option for automation

Businesses are operating with this unruly challenge of delivering on time, or rather before time, or in real-time. This makes speed undefinable for businesses across the world. Whether it’s a software glitch, a virus check, or performance issues, software applications can be aggressively tested by leveraging an automation framework that doesn’t breakdown or cause a human error.

3.      Geo-tracked security guidelines

Businesses based out in a particular region need to keep a watch on the kind of threats that occur in their zone and the hacks occurring in the area, and accordingly work on their security guidelines to implement a relevant security policy for the business. At the conceptual level, this can be a strengthening factor for every organization to consider for a safe interface in the longer run. Along with international security guidelines, a local perspective definitely brings value.

4.      Build the required skill sets with business relevance

Sometimes just buying an automation tool, or getting security testing experts on board might not be relevant. Your organization might just need some effective Test Data Management tools to get the required data on the previously conducted tests. What’s important is to build a strategy as per the needs of your organization, your customers, your region, and various factors within your business ecosystem. This can be done by building the required infrastructure within the organization, or on boarding independent consultants who can bring expertise.

Our Take

Our experts at Cigniti have worked with clients across diverse geographies, including clients across UK, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. We have collaborated with clients from various sectors, namely, Airlines, Banking, Communications, Energy & Utilities, Financial Services, Insurance, and Retail. This exciting journey has brought together a bundle of cases and learning in our kitty.

During one of its collaborations, Cigniti team collaborated with an Irish low-cost airline headquartered in Swords, Dublin, Ireland, with its primary operational bases at Dublin and London Stansted Airports. Our team worked with the client for end-to-end Testing, which helped the Airline to deploy multiple production releases in a single week.

The initial scope of the project was manual functional testing of their new website. With client gaining confidence in Cigniti’s delivery capability, it was later expanded to provide services in the areas of Test Preparation, Compatibility, Mobile, Usability, and Exploratory & Performance Testing.

Cigniti’s Security TCoE comprises dedicated teams of security testing specialists with deep expertise spanning multiple domains/industries, cutting-edge technological resources and tools. Connect with us to leverage our robust methodologies, processes, templates, checklists, and guidelines for web applications, software products, networks, and cloud.

Additionally, Cigniti’s Advisory and Transformation Services help organizations understand and improve all QA focus areas – people, tools, and infrastructure across the delivery lifecycle. Are you looking at QA Transformation for your business?

Connect with our Advisory team and build the right strategy.