Digital solutions are at the heart of every organization today, driving growth, innovation, and efficiency, but with the increasing reliance on digital platforms comes the ever-present risk of security threats.
As organizations expand their digital footprint, ensuring the security of their digital solutions becomes paramount. This is where quality engineering (QE) comes in, offering a holistic approach to embedding security into digital solutions right from the start. Quality engineering can help embed security into digital solutions, ensuring that they are strong, secure, and capable of withstanding any security threats that come at them.
The importance of security in digital solutions
Vulnerabilities are everywhere in the digital world. Whether it’s personal data, financial transactions, or intellectual property, cyber criminals are constantly looking for opportunities to exploit weak points in digital systems. The consequences of a security breach can be devastating, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage, legal penalties, and the loss of customer trust.
Quality engineering: a holistic approach to security
Quality engineering goes beyond traditional quality assurance (QA) by integrating security throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). Instead of treating security as an afterthought or a final step in the development process, quality engineering embeds it from the very beginning, ensuring that digital solutions are secure by design.
Here are 6 of the ways in which quality engineering helps in embedding and ensuring security in digital solutions:
1. The use of shift-left security
One of the core principles of quality engineering is the “shift-left” approach, which emphasizes moving testing and security considerations earlier in the development process. Traditionally, security testing was performed towards the end of the software development life cycle, often leading to delays and costly rework if vulnerabilities were discovered late. Through shifting security left, quality engineers can identify and address security issues during the design and development phases.
2. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with security
CI/CD pipelines have become a standard practice in modern software development, enabling teams to deliver features and updates rapidly. Quality engineering ensures that security is integrated into the CI/CD pipeline, thus ensuring continuous security testing alongside functional and performance testing.
3. Strong testing strategies
Quality engineering encompasses a wide range of testing strategies, each of which plays a critical role in ensuring the security of digital solutions. These strategies include:
- Static application security testing (SAST): SAST tools analyze the source code for potential vulnerabilities without executing the code. This allows developers to identify and fix issues such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and insecure APIs before the code is deployed.
- Dynamic application security testing (DAST): DAST tools test the application in its running state, simulating attacks to identify vulnerabilities that may not be apparent in the source code. This helps in detecting issues like runtime vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
- Penetration testing: Penetration testing involves simulating real-world attacks on the application to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors. Quality engineering ensures that penetration testing is conducted regularly, especially after major updates or changes to the application.
- Fuzz testing: Fuzz testing involves inputting random or unexpected data into the application to identify potential vulnerabilities and crashes. This helps in identifying edge cases that may not be covered by traditional testing methods.
4. Secure coding practices
Quality engineering emphasizes the importance of secure coding practices. Developers are trained and equipped with the knowledge to write secure code, reducing the likelihood of introducing vulnerabilities during development.
5. Monitoring and incident response
Quality engineering doesn’t stop once the application is deployed. Continuous monitoring and incident response are critical components of a robust security strategy. Quality engineers work closely with operations teams to ensure that digital solutions are monitored for security threats in real-time.
6. Compliance and regulatory considerations
Many industries are subject to strict regulatory requirements regarding data security and privacy. Quality engineering ensures that digital solutions are compliant with relevant regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS.
Case study: security and quality engineering in action for leading telecoms organization
An example of security and quality engineering in action comes from a leading telecommunications client. They needed to ensure a way to send messages between cars in order to provide real-time safety-related information to nearby drivers in the same region. The solution needed to be delivered in a secure and flexible way so that it could be accessed and utilized by all certified parties, and the platform they needed was designed to be deployed in multiple cloud environments and regions
A security assessment was performed which defined the scope for a penetration test to validate the severity of issues identified. This led to the creation of a risk register to track the mitigation of identified risks. Our security analysts then evaluated and contributed to the design of our client’s solution to ensure that it would be built in line with their security policies and industry best practices.
A detailed security assessment was made for the cloud hosted broker environment and associated vehicle (client) communication with the server according to customer policies and message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) security recommendations.
Compliance scans were performed and defined based on our client’s threat modeling. The project was supported by stakeholder buy in to ensure vulnerabilities were identified and risks mitigated in a timely and pragmatic manner.
Final thoughts
Security it is an essential component of every digital solution, while quality engineering provides a comprehensive approach to embedding and ensuring security throughout the entire software development lifecycle. Having a quality engineering mindset is crucial, allowing organizations to build secure and resilient digital solutions that protect their data, customers, and reputation in an increasingly complex threat landscape.
As cyber threats continue to evolve, the role of quality engineering in safeguarding digital solutions is more critical than ever. Integrating security into every stage of development, from design to deployment and beyond, ensures that quality engineering helps digital solutions to not only be high-performing, but also secure by design.
Meet the author – Taoufik Zainou
Taoufik Zainou is a Vice-President at Qualitest with over 18 years of experience in IT Consulting focusing on Identity & Access Management, User Access Management, Cyber Security, IT Service Management, IT Auditing, IT Compliance, IT Governance and IT Risk Management for blue chip companies in telecoms, financial services, energy/oil industry and public sectors.
