Archive for August, 2008
Data Scrambling leaves CIOs without egg on their face
Original Software addresses data security issues in TestBench for Oracle v6.3
August, 5, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor, today announced the release of the latest version of TestBench for Oracle which includes an intelligent data scrambling module, protecting companies from data exposure and satisfying audit and compliance requirements, as well as safeguarding the individuals or companies referenced in the data.
Common sense and good practice say that exposing traceable production data to test disciplines is risky. Despite legal requirements and in some cases severe penalties for breaking them, testing on live data still tends to be common practice. One survey showed 62 percent of companies were using live customer data to test applications and 49 percent shared this data with outsourced testers, with no way of knowing if it was ever compromised*.
Production data as a source of background data is valuable and desirable for testing and allows the test environment to represent the live system as closely as possible. A recent report from analyst group Freeform Dynamics – ‘Data Governance in the Software Lifecycle’ – highlights the need for improvements in automation in areas such as test data management, and live data sanitation in the testing process.
Using the new data scrambling module within TestBench for Oracle, real data can be used that accurately reflects the live environment, but has been made anonymous, neutralising the risk of testing on live data by no longer exposing real customer details and high security risk items to the live testing process.
TestBench can transform this data in two ways:
• By using existing data – Real records are used but the data fields are randomly scrambled between rows, de-identifying customer records for example. Developers may choose to keep some related fields together – for example lines 1, 2, and 3 of the address, for address validation purposes – and just mix up the other details.
• By generating new data – recommended for when data is so sensitive (for example, credit card numbers and bank details) that just mixing the field with a different customer name is not sufficient. Developers have three options – to randomly generate, to generate numbers with a sequential start value, or they have the option to write their own program to generate data and plug it straight in. To maintain database integrity, the module will intelligently change these details everywhere they appear – for example in order files, within the customer records database and in all invoices.
Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software said: “The scrambling module completes our Oracle data management capabilities. Customers can already extract data from live systems to a test environment and the testing functionality enables them to view the effects of the application under test on the database. They can then build rules to validate database effects for all future tests. Our data protection module allows users to roll back the changes and reset the environment if it becomes corrupted by any testing activity, and now we can also ensure that the data being used, is not only risk-free but is still representative of the live environment.”
All of the TestBench for Oracle functionality including data scrambling is available on 9i, 10g and 11i versions.
* The Insecurity of Test Data: The Unseen Crisis, – a Compuware / Ponemon Institute study
New Portal from Original Software enables better test-team collaboration
August, 5, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor, today announced the launch of Original Software Manager, a brand new test-asset management portal, providing a single point of entry to the complete Original Software product set.
Using a simple file structure within Windows Explorer, workspaces can be stored locally or put on the network to share between test teams. It allows better organisation of all the assets involved on test projects, from automation, workflow and manual testing tools, to test plans, scripts and action maps, as well as supporting documents and spread sheets. In fact, any kind of item or application can be dragged into these workspace folders, facilitating knowledge sharing and collaboration within the test team.
Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software said: “The new portal allows testing and QA professionals to manage licences and more easily deal with complex environments where multiple servers and testing solutions may be deployed. With a user friendly interface, it is anticipated that significant time savings will be found in locating files, launching products and utilising assets that may already exist within the team.”
Original Software Manager is shipped as a free add-on with all new product purchases or requested as a CD by existing customers.
TestBench for iSeries v6.3 increases test coverage and saves hours of testing time
August, 5, 2008 – Original Software, the testing solution vendor, today announced the availability of TestBench for iSeries 6.3.
Customer demand has driven the latest enhancements to TestBench for iSeries which is spearheaded by a new report compare facility, reducing the risk of undetected errors and allowing testers to accurately and quickly identify faults within reports.
“Report Compare is an invaluable asset for our test team” said Dale Cook, Manager of Software Development at customer Euronet. “A typical regression test on our applications would produce hundreds of reports. It just wasn’t feasible to manually check through all of these. Subsequently when an error was picked up, it took huge amounts of research time to run through the reports trying to figure out why it was wrong. The worst case scenario though, would be the financial implications of something we didn’t catch going out the door. It really was an unacceptable level of risk that we were at pains to minimise. Nothing on the market sufficiently met our needs. Report Compare will reduce corporate risk and allow us to improve the quality of our applications” he concluded.
Report compare enables testers to compare a new version of a report against a previously validated baseline version, ensuring that when a program change is made, they can instantly tell if there has been any adverse impact to the report. It will identify key pieces of information, for example invoice numbers or product codes, then do an intelligent comparison of two report runs, identifying additional line items and correctly matching up those that exist in both reports.
Test tools have long struggled with anomalies in test reports. For example, if you had two reports, line one would have been compared with line one and so on, any error or additional line item would have thrown it all off-kilter. If this happened right at the beginning, the whole report was useless. If your first error appeared on page 999, you may have lost interest after the first 50 pages and assumed it was working correctly. Now, in an industry first, report compare allows testers to identify changes straight away and trap errors they wouldn’t have otherwise picked up -a huge potential risk if sending out invoices to customers with wrong invoice values.
