{"id":5785,"date":"2021-09-02T07:06:02","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T07:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inswwdev.azurewebsites.net\/au\/?p=5785"},"modified":"2024-11-27T05:10:27","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T05:10:27","slug":"application-testing-automated-vs-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/insights\/geek-speak\/professional-services\/application-testing-automated-vs-manual\/","title":{"rendered":"Application Testing \u2013 Automated vs Manual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a pandemic world, testing is crucial to understand risk and take proactive mitigation steps, and the same is true in IT. In this blog, I will look at what testing means and why your applications need to be secure and up to date, together with how you can achieve great outcomes by leveraging the cloud and automation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Application testing usually means different things, and it comes down to why you might be testing. It could be for quality assurance when creating and releasing your Line of Business (LoB) applications, or it could be for regression testing to see how they interact with existing systems. Finally, your applications or operating system could have an important update which you are looking to evaluate the performance and impact of before you release them to users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s focus on testing applications, whether it be an operating system or application update, the application itself, or an environmental change, like a policy or a setting, and why it is essential for cybersecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DO YOU PATCH ON TIME?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For many reasons, it is quite common for organisations to delay patches. It could be due to compatibility – you cannot quantify the impact of deploying the update. Or perhaps your CTO does not want to be the first to launch, putting your business operations at risk and instead choosing to wait to see if other users report issues. Whilst these are valid reasons, you are actually exposing your environment to risk when you delay. We know that once a patch is released and the exploit or the vulnerability is made public, cybercriminals and other nefarious groups will attempt to exploit unpatched environments. The University of Maryland approximates a cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds on average against vulnerable computers \u2013 is this a risk you can continue to take?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CRIME WAITS FOR NO MAN<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You really cannot afford to wait. IBM has estimated the average cost of a cybersecurity breach is around USD 3.8 million, and it takes up to 280 days to identify and contain a breach. CompariTech measured the impact to a company\u2019s share price once an exploit has been publicly notified. What they found was an average loss of -7.21% in the first one hundred days and shares underperforming against the market average by -4.18% of the coming year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Australian Cybersecurity Centre or ACSC, formally known as the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), published guidance on mitigating cybersecurity incidents known as the Essential 8v. The essential eight provides a clear and concise guide with practical steps to continuously mitigate ever-increasing Cybersecurity attacks on IT infrastructure. One of the top mitigation recommendations is to implement patching on your systems and applications. ACSC recommends systems with a known exploit are patched within 48 hours. This is quite a fast turnaround time from release, test and deployment. However, it is crucial to do so to ensure you are not at risk once a patch is released.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typically, if there is an application or operating system update, this update would get packaged and pushed out to a small subset of users or test machines. The test itself generally consists of: <\/p>\n\n\n\n