Digital businesses must deliver exceptional customer experiences that ensure user retention, customer loyalty and a relentless revenue stream. While the stakes are high and businesses compete aggressively to achieve digital transformation, quality remains at the focal point.
Quality assurance (QA) vs quality control (QC) are two key aspects of product or service quality management. There is no denying of the fact that some quality assurance and quality control activities may be interrelated, but the two processes differ. When comparing quality assurance vs quality control, both processes share similar objectives but employ different strategies to ensure customers in the UK receive finished products of the highest quality.

Quality assurance vs quality control

What is Quality assurance?

Quality assurance defined as a quality management initiative aiming to provide confidence that an application’s digital quality requirements will be fulfilled. Quality assurance is twofold—internally to the stakeholders and externally to the final users, regulatory authorities and third parties.

An overview of QA processes

QA involves activities and procedures performed during the software development life cycle that help ensure a high-quality application release. QA includes members across departments discussing, planning and executing tests to validate product quality.

A QA process deals with the following aspects:

• Requirement gathering, designing and prototyping

• Programming and code reviews

• Creation of version control

• Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)

• Configuration management

• Test planning and execution

• Release management

• Deployment and integration

• Customer acceptance and feedback

What is Quality control?

Quality control is defined as a quality management process aiming to fulfil an application’s quality requirements or service. While quality assurance deals with how processes and procedures are performed, or an application is created, quality control can be termed as the ‘inspection’ aspect of quality management system.

An overview of QC processes

In QC, it is ensured that the developed application meets the organisation’s quality standards. Defects in an application, such as UI bugs, design glitches, accessibility issues or security flaws, can cause irreparable damage to both the end users as well as the product businesses.

A QC process deals with the following aspects:

• Identifying application errors

• Verifying predefined quality requirements are met

• Ensuring conformance with industry compliances and regulations

• Creating and maintaining quality reports

• Determining features where UX could be uplifted

Quality control vs Quality assurance: The similarities

Ensures a high-quality product:

A business can’t simply release a product and hope for the best. QA helps digital organizations plan how they will approach product quality. QC activities helps ensure digital quality businesses that the finished products meet expectations. QC and QA play vital roles in delivering top-quality services and products to customers and securing revenue for the business.

Ensures adherence to policies and procedures:

While QA is more process-oriented than QC, both approaches follow standards set by the organisation for securing high quality. QC might involve some exploratory or UX testing that demands a certain level of creativity on the tester’s part. However, defect detection and remediation must still be recorded and executed systematically.

Mitigates major quality issues:

Defects may be in the form of minor inconveniences or highly escalated disruptions. The earlier such defects are identified, the more cost-effective and easier it is to fix the issue. The risk increases exponentially as defects move closer to the customers’ hands. QC and QA aim to achieve reduced time and cost to market for digital businesses. The former helps to establish processes for early detection, and the latter helps businesses fix as many errors as possible in the application.

Improves the organisation’s product development processes:

Feedback loops are a familiar idea for developers. Organisations focused on processes of QA and QC follow a continuous learning path and eventually become more efficient and effective with each product release. QC and QA enable digital businesses to understand where they may improve in critical areas of planning, automation, bug detection, etc., to enable a great CX.

What is the Difference Between Quality Assurance and Quality Control

Conclusion

Quality control and quality assurance are essential for delivering high-quality applications and services in the UK. While quality assurance focuses on preventing defects and ensuring overall product quality, quality control detects and fixes defects. Both processes are integral to effective quality management.

How can Testingxperts help Quality Assurance Services?

TestingXperts (Tx) is one of the five largest global pure-play software testing services providers. Tx has been chosen as a trusted QA partner by Fortune clients and ensures superior testing outcomes for its global clientele. We have rich expertise in enabling end-to-end testing services for global clients across various industry domains like healthcare, telecom, BFSI, retail & eCommerce, etc.

Our wide range of QA testing services in the United Kingdom includes:

Test Advisory:

TestingXperts’ Test Advisory Services provide specialist advice to help achieve overall product quality, reduced release cycle time, faster time-to-market, and significant reductions in QA costs.

DevOps Consulting Services:

Our DevOps experts will analyse business needs and help achieve a strategic DevOps adoption roadmap. Our wide range of DevOps services like DevOps consulting, DevOps CI/CD implementation, Enterprise DevOps Transformation, IAC consulting and Implementation, and Test Automation in DevOps will help achieve faster and quality releases.

Test Automation:

Our in-house test automation experts have rich expertise in industry-leading test automation tools. Our end-to-end test automation services help businesses reduce regression time and cost.

Functional Testing:

Tx has years of experience providing functional testing services for clients across domains. Our range of functional testing services includes automation, manual, regression, and mobile application testing. We have in-house mobile test labs with numerous mobile devices.

Non-Functional Testing:

Tx provides a wide range of non-functional testing services such as performance and load testing, security testing, usability testing, and accessibility testing. We also have an in-house performance testing accelerator, ‘Tx-PEARS,’ which helps with all non-functional testing requirements, including continuous monitoring of your infrastructure in production and lower environments.

Next-gen Testing:

Our wide range of next-gen testing services includes AI testing, RPA testing using UiPath Test Suite, Digital testing, IoT testing, etc.

The post Quality Assurance vs Quality Control – A Quick Overview first appeared on TestingXperts.

Today, the demand for high-quality software is rapidly rising for businesses across industries. Every business needs scalable, robust, and high-quality software to deliver a greater user experience. But, how can companies to achieve high-quality software? It can be achieved by leveraging Quality Assurance (QA), which helps track the software quality and ensures that the specified software meets the defined business requirements.

Content 1. What is Quality Assurance (QA)? 2. Benefits of leveraging QA testing services 3. Major difference between QA and QE 4. What role does Quality Assurance play in DevOps? 5. What is the significance of QA across leading industries in 2022? 6. Best QA practices for software testing in 2022 7. Major types of QA testing for businesses to leverage 8. Top 5 QA Trends to watch in 2022 9. Leading QA testing tools in 2022 10. As a Leading QA testing services provider, how can TestingXperts help businesses? 11. Conclusion

What is Quality Assurance (QA)?

Quality Assurance or QA testing determines whether the software meets the specific quality standards. Software quality assurance involves evaluating the software based on functionality, performance, usability, security, etc. QA testing also involves checking the quality of the process used to develop, test, and release the software. Thus, QA is an integral part of quality management focused on providing confidence internally to business managers and stakeholders and externally to customers, government agencies, regulators, and third parties.

According to Wikipedia, Quality assurance (QA) prevents mistakes and defects in manufactured products and avoids problems when delivering products or services to customers. ISO 9000 defines QA as part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled.

Benefits of leveraging QA testing services

Ensures proper procedures are followed:

By leveraging QA testing, businesses can ensure that their software is developed and tested by following proper procedures throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Ensures bug-free software:

QA testing ensures that software is free from bugs as the product is tested end-to-end by QA testers.

Improves product quality:

QA teams perform testing, process monitoring, audits, and product evaluation to enhance the overall product quality.

Protects brand reputation:

By leveraging QA testing, businesses can improve product quality and achieve bug-free software that ultimately uplifts their reputation and delivers a greater customer experience.

Ensures security:

QA testing ensures that the software is built and tested and is free from any security loopholes, which ultimately improves the security-based features of the software.

Improves customer satisfaction:

QA testing ensures that the software has all the required features, works appropriately, and improves customer satisfaction.

Major difference between QA and QE

QA teams help prevent defects in the software by ensuring it is built and tested by following all the procedures throughout the SDLC. This QA process ensures that software meets all quality standards and is free from bugs. On the other hand, Quality Engineering (QE) assures high standards during software development and is explicitly suitable for agile and DevOps methodologies. Typically, quality engineers play a critical role in quality engineering by creating, implementing, and maintaining systems to ensure effective quality assurance processes.

Another significant difference is that the software quality assurance team or the software quality analysts focus on implementing quality in the software during its built stage. They even perform quality tests. Whereas the software quality engineers focus on further improving the QA process. They work only after the software quality analysts complete their work and submit QA requirements.

What role does Quality Assurance play in DevOps?

Today’s businesses are rapidly adopting DevOps processes to automate software deployment and embrace a culture where development and testing are taken up parallelly. The DevOps methodology helps ensure quality checks at every step of the software development and ensures faster releases and faster time-to-market.

Since quality is deeply integrated into DevOps, QA becomes an integral part of the DevOps processes, as stated below:

• In a DevOps environment, the QA teams work collaboratively with development and operations teams to ensure faster releases with continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) to get high-quality software.

• Quality is ensured with QA in place throughout the software development, software testing, and software delivery cycle within the DevOps processes.

• By ensuring QA in DevOps, the development and testing teams take full responsibility for the software quality.

• QAops is the combination of QA with IT Operation and Development teams. It helps deliver high-quality software at a faster pace and enables better communication between cross-functional teams in the software development process.

• Thus, QA helps release code consistently and ensures quality is not just limited to removing the bugs but is built throughout the software release cycle with DevOps.

Further, businesses across industries need quality software, and seemingly QA plays a significant role in enabling quality products for all industries.

What is the significance of QA across leading industries in 2022?

Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI):

Today, the BFSI industry heavily depends on digital transformation technology and needs high-quality apps to deliver a great CX, which can be achieved by leveraging QA testing. Some of the other factors which establish QA testing needs for the BFSI sector include:

• BFSI apps usually have multi-tier or N-tier architecture with several underlying app layers that need effective QA testing validation.

• BFSI apps should have proper integration with third-party apps and payment gateways, which requires QA testing.

• BFSI industry should ensure no app downtime or server outage situations, which is ensured through effective QA testing.

• It is essential to conduct QA testing of BFSI apps to ensure there are no security loopholes in the app that cyber attackers can exploit.

• Moreover, BFSI apps must comply with open banking standards, regulatory compliances, and web content accessibility standards which are ensured through effective QA testing.

Retail/eCommerce:

The demand for high-performing eCommerce apps is rapidly rising. Even a small bug in an eCommerce app can drastically decrease sales volume or result in visitor/customer loss, revenue dips, and more. Thus, QA testing is essential for eCommerce and retail apps. Some of the other factors include:

• QA testing ensures seamless eCommerce app cart functionality for sudden price changes, discounts, special offers, or when a new product is added to the shopping cart.

• To ensure the correct display of the product page, proper app navigation, and fully functional links, QA testing is essential.

• Also, eCommerce apps must perform seamlessly on all devices, platforms, and OS to attract more customers, which again needs QA testing.

• eCommerce apps must be secure as it contains customer’s sensitive data like their phone no, banking credentials, card details etc. which must be protected by leveraging QA testing

• QA testing ensures eCommerce apps comply with WCAG guidelines to ensure seamless access of apps to all.

Telecom:

The Telecom industry plays a critical role in keeping the world connected, and as the apps are interconnected, they should perform seamlessly, which needs QA testing. Some other reasons why the telecom industry needs QA testing include:

• Telecom apps usually are complex and have several underlying API layers which need effective validation, which can be achieved through QA testing.

• The Telecom industry has to deal with complex tasks like network configuration, network inventory, fault management, and service provisioning, which need proper QA testing.

• By leveraging security testing, telecom businesses can be ensured that their apps are free from vulnerabilities and security flaws.

• Further, QA testing can also help telecom businesses optimize their time-to-market and reduce the number of customer complaints.

Healthcare:

The healthcare sector deals with critical patient information and must ensure that healthcare, pharma, and other apps are free from bugs and security loopholes that need effective QA testing. Some of the other reasons why the healthcare sector needs QA testing include:

• QA testing is required for the functional validation of the healthcare apps

• Healthcare apps need to be accessible to all people, including people with certain disabilities, which can be ensured by leveraging QA accessibility testing.

• The healthcare sector can ensure quick loading speed, effective app navigation, and seamless compatibility of their apps across OS and devices by leveraging QA testing.

• The healthcare industry is data-rich, and there is an essential need to store and organize information properly, which needs big data testing, an integral part of QA testing.

Travel and Logistics:

Logistics is an essential part of the supply chain for every industry and is constantly under pressure to deliver products faster. Due to the rapid technological advancements, the logistics sector needs to adopt disruptive QA solutions to ensure continuous improvement, enhanced communications, better visibility, and faster delivery. Some of the reasons why this industry needs QA testing include:

• With QA testing, the travel and logistics industry can save itself from situations of communication failure that can lead to fatalities, delayed deliveries, inappropriate supplies, and loss of business, client, reputation, and money.

• QA testing also improves the operational efficiency of the logistics industry

• Security vulnerabilities can be identified and removed from the logistics and related software by leveraging security testing.

• The logistics sector heavily depends on technology and is adopting cloud apps rapidly. QA testing ensures proper functioning, security, and data migration from physical storage to cloud apps.

Best QA practices for software testing in 2022

Ensure continuous monitoring:

Ensures continuous monitoring of the SDLC process to ensure that the agreed standards and procedures are followed while the software is built and tested.

Include risk management:

For an effective QA process, testers must include risk management and other related processes to identify, assess, prioritize, monitor, and control the risk.

Check compliance with industry standards:

QA testers must check that a product meets all the necessary compliance and industry standards by leveraging compliance testing.

Prioritize bugs based on risk and usage:

It is best to prioritize the bugs before fixing them based on the risk and usage of that particular area of an app.

Ensure testing throughout the SDLC:

Testers need to conduct QA testing throughout the SDLC to remove bugs as early as possible.

Automate regression suite:

Testers must automate the regression suite to ensure automated regression tests whenever changes in the software are introduced. The automated regression suite ensures there are no bugs in the software even after frequent code changes.

Ensure accurate reports documentation:

It is best to document the software testing results in a report as it acts as excellent training material and helps stakeholders make informed decisions.

Major types of QA testing for businesses to leverage

Functional testing

• Unit testing

• Integration testing

• Regression testing

• Test automation

• User acceptance testing

Non-functional testing

• Security testing

• Performance and load testing

• Usability testing

• Accessibility testing

Next-gen & Specialized testing

• RPA testing

• AI-based testing

• Digital testing

• IoT testing

• Blockchain testing

• API testing

• Cloud testing

• Data migration testing

Top 5 QA Trends to watch in 2022

QAOps to leap in 2022:

Today’s digital businesses are rapidly adopting DevOps methodology to deliver software faster. However, faster delivery alone is not enough to deliver a great CX, and it is essential to ensure quality along with faster delivery. This is where QA in DevOps or QAOps plays its role, and it is expected to take a leap in 2022.

RPA to lead charts in 2022:

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an extension of automation, and it can be applied to automate almost anything in a structured form. In the upcoming years, the usage of RPA in software testing is expected to rise more as it will let testers automate large and complex data through an easy-to-use interface. Testers will be able to give commands to already taught robots to perform several tasks easily and can significantly save a lot of time and effort.

According to Globenewswire, the Global Robotic Process (RPA) Automation Market size is expected to reach $7.2 billion by 2025, rising at a CAGR of 32.6% during the forecast period of 2019-2025.

Rise in the usage of AI and ML in software testing:

As businesses have moved towards digital transformation, it has become essential to embed advanced technologies like AI and ML into software testing. AI and ML in software testing can help businesses understand customer behavior, predict market demand and deliver software faster with advanced testing techniques. Due to this reason, the use of AI and ML in software testing is expected to rise more in 2022.

According to Gartner, Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) software revenue is forecasted to reach $62.5 billion in 2022, increasing 21.3 percent from 2021.

Low code/no-code automation to gain prominence:

The low-code/no-code automation platforms are software programs that require little to no coding knowledge. It offers pre-designed workflow templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface for customizing workflows that people without back-end computer programming knowledge can use easily. Since it provides various benefits to businesses, like faster time to market, scalability, self-service capability, etc., their usage is expected to grow more in 2022.

According to NASSCOM, the global low-code development industry was valued at $13.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.1% during the forecast period 2021-2025

Cyber Security Testing to gain more attention:

Due to the rapidly rising cyber-attacks, cybersecurity has become an essential need for all industries and has also become a boardroom discussion for CXOs and CIOs. Today, businesses have realized the importance of security testing of their applications, networks, and systems to ensure secure transactions and complete protection of their customer data. Thus, cyber security testing has gained a lot of importance, and its prominence is expected to rise more in the coming years.

According to Mordor Intelligence, the Global Cybersecurity Market was valued at USD 132.94 billion in 2021, and it is expected to register a CAGR of 14.5% from 2022 to 2027.

Leading QA testing tools in 2022

UiPath Test Suite

It is an open-source RPA testing tool that can automate any desktop or web app. This RPA tool offers a complete suite for functional testing under one roof. The UiPath Test Suite contains StudioPro, Orchestrator, Test Management Hub, Test Manager, and Robots. UiPath can be hosted in virtual terminals or cloud environments and works well with .Net, Java, Flash, PDF, Legacy, SAP, etc.

Tricentis TOSCA:

It is an AI-driven, next-gen test automation testing tool that allows Agile and DevOps teams to achieve test automation goals rapidly. This tool enables teams to go beyond continuous testing with AI. Tricentis allows automating end-to-end testing of software applications. This tool combines multiple aspects of software testing (test case design, test automation, test data design and generation, and analytics) to test GUIs and APIs from a business perspective.

Selenium:

It is an open-source web automation tool and supports all OS like Windows, MAC, Linux, etc., and web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. It supports programming languages such as Java, PHP, C#, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. It comes with a record and playback feature that helps test web applications. Testers can run various scripts in parallel using Selenium, making the test automation process faster.

Katalon Studio:

It is a codeless automation tool used to test API, mobile, web, and desktop applications. This testing tool supports multiple platforms like Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it also supports both SOAP and RESTful for API and services testing. This tool has some great features like recording actions, creating test cases, generating test scripts, executing tests, reporting results, and easily integrating with many other tools throughout the SDLC.

Botium:

It is an open-source test automation tool provided by Selenium and is used for testing chatbot applications. It supports chatbot makers in training and quality assurance: Chatbot makers define what the chatbot is supposed to do.

Conclusion

Today’s businesses need high-quality products to deliver a greater CX and to beat the competition. Quality assurance is an effective way to ensure the quality of products and services, and it can save cost, time, and effort by preventing defects in the software as QA teams identify them. Businesses should leverage software quality assurance testing from a next-gen specialist QA and software testing services provider for superior quality products and deliver a great CX.

As a Leading QA testing services provider, how can TestingXperts help businesses?

TestingXperts (Tx) is one of the 5 largest pure-play software testing services provider globally. Tx has been chosen as a trusted QA partner by Fortune clients and ensures superior testing outcomes for its global clientele. We have rich expertise in enabling end-to-end testing services for global clients across various industry domains like healthcare, telecom, BFSI, retail & eCommerce, etc.

Our wide range of QA testing services includes:

Test Advisory: TestingXperts’ Test Advisory Services provide you with specialist advice to help you achieve overall product quality, reduced release cycle time, faster time-to-market, and significant reductions in QA costs. Our Test advisory services will help you move to the next maturity level in QA.

DevOps Consulting Services: Our DevOps experts will analyze your business needs and help you achieve a strategic DevOps adoption roadmap. Our wide range of DevOps services like DevOps consulting, DevOps CI/CD implementation, Enterprise DevOps Transformation, IAC consulting and Implementation, and Test Automation in DevOps will help you achieve faster and quality releases.

Test Automation: We have in-house test automation experts with rich expertise in industry-leading test automation tools. We can help you reduce regression time and cost with our end-to-end test automation services with our in-house test automation accelerator Tx-Automate.

Functional Testing: Tx has years of experience providing functional testing services for clients across domains. Our wide range of functional testing services includes automation, manual, regression, and mobile application testing. We have in-house mobile test labs with numerous mobile devices.

Non-Functional Testing: Tx provides a wide range of non-functional testing services such as performance and load testing, security testing, usability testing, and accessibility testing. We also have an in-house performance testing accelerator, ‘Tx-PEARS,’ which helps with all non-functional testing requirements, including continuous monitoring of your infrastructure in production as well as in lower environments.

Next-gen Testing: Our wide range of next-gen testing services include AI testing, RPA testing using UiPath Test Suite, Digital testing, IoT testing, etc.

The post Why Quality Assurance (QA) Is Critical for Businesses Across Industries In 2022? first appeared on TestingXperts.

Content 1. An overview of the current banking industry 2. What are today’s customers looking for in banking apps? 3. Latest statistics depicting banking apps usage dominance during the pandemic 4. Why should banking systems leverage Quality Assurance (QA) testing? 5. 10 Reasons why QA testing should be leveraged by banking systems 6. Conclusion

An overview of the current banking industry

There has been a lot of buzz regarding digitization and the use of new-age technology in the banking sector in recent years. Undoubtedly, the current pandemic has led to the increased usage of banking mobile apps and web apps. According to Sensor Tower, there have been nearly 1.24 billion downloads of finance apps in Q2 2020, 840 million of which were made through Google Play, compared to 395 million through the iOS App Store. This statistics depicts the increased interest of customer towards banking applications.

It is predicted that to achieve more digitization in banking systems, the use of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud services, and blockchain is expected to rise. The customer experience (CX) and customer data security continue to remain the primary focus for the financial sector for which banking systems are looking for ways to improve their applications, simplify customer journey, and provide them with a seamless omnichannel experience. Hence, we are sharing some of the important features which today’s banking customers are looking for in digital banking apps.

What are today’s customers looking for in banking apps?

● Customers prefer banking applications to be instantly loaded, easy to operate and smooth transactions processing to deliver them a simplified and great user experience

● Experts believe that banking through mobile devices is much safer in comparison to open websites. Thus, today customers are looking for more secure and reliable banking applications that deliver a seamless transaction experience

● Due to the current pandemic, irrespective of the person’s age, everyone continues to focus on online banking having easy interface and quick access to various transactions features

● Customers also prefer apps to load faster and balance loads of users and remain flawless with no downtime while in use

● Customers want their banking apps to notify them of their balances and other important notifications to ease their banking process and get informed messages

● Mobile app ATM Connectivity to enable access to ATM via scanning is one upcoming trend that people are looking forward to

● Banking application features such as voice payments and image recognition are some more features needed by banking app users

Latest statistics depicting banking apps usage dominance during the pandemic

● According to Globenewswire, the global mobile banking market was valued at $715.3 million in 2018 and is expected to reach $1,824.7 million by 2026, registering a CAGR of 12.2% from 2019-2026

● According to Statista, 90% of users in the U.S. use mobile banking apps to check their balances, 79% do it to view recent transactions, 59% to pay bills, and 57% to make transfers. These statistics depict that a large set of the population uses mobile banking services and thus, the great UI of the mobile application is the need of the hour

● According to Statista, the average weekly usage of fintech apps in Japan went up by 55 percent, in South Korea it went up by 35%, and in the United States by 20% between December 29, 2019, to March 1, 2020, which coincides with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

● According to the World Retail Banking Report 2020 (WRBR) published by Capgemini and Efma, the report states that over half (57%) of the consumers now prefer internet banking, up from 49% pre-COVID-19, and 55% prefer banking mobile apps, compared with 47% previously, the stakes have risen further as the COVID-19 context continues to move consumers towards digital banking

With the sudden spurt in the usage of digital banking apps, it becomes important for banking systems to ensure their mobile and web apps are digitalized and deliver a great user experience by leveraging Quality Assurance (QA) best practices.

Why should banking systems leverage Quality Assurance (QA) testing?

As technology is evolving, financial institutions are rapidly adopting digital technology and are moving towards digitization. The banking industry now heavily depends on technology and various types of banking applications, which need to perform seamlessly to provide a great experience to the customer.

Since banks deal with crucial customer data and heavy transactions 24/7, it becomes essentially important for banking systems to have the right QA strategy in place. QA testing helps to improve the quality of these banking products before releasing them to the market to ensure the product is defect-free, enabling seamless transactions and deliver a great customer experience. Hence, it is essential for banking systems to leverage QA testing to get high-quality and flawless mobile apps.

10 Reasons why QA testing should be leveraged by banking systems

1. Numerous underlying app layers require QA testing:

Banking applications usually have a multi-tier architecture or N-tier architecture. The most common 3 tier architecture has three layers namely presentation, application, and database layers. Since the API layers contain the logic of an application and directly touches both the data layer and presentation layers, it requires end-to-end QA testing.

With the advent of Open APIs, new business opportunities are delivered at the core of banking services. Thus, to enable such services, the back-end and middleware systems must be prepared to support open APIs which involves complex integrations. Hence, it becomes mandatory to validate all these underlying layers through API testing with a robust quality assurance process involved.

2. Integration with third-party apps & payment gateway needs end-to-end validation:

Banking systems require large scale integration with third-party apps such as eCommerce apps, gaming applications, food delivery applications, etc. To ensure that applications are well integrated with third-party applications and function properly, it is essential to conduct Integration and functional testing of banking systems.

Many times, we hear of cases where customer’s money gets stuck in the payment gateway and leads to transaction failure or pending status along with the deduction of money from their respective bank accounts. These type of glitches annoys the customer deeply. Hence, to ensure that your banking systems have stable payment gateway integration that provides a seamless transaction experience to customers, an effective QA testing is essential.

3. Server downtime/outages require testing:

Many times, banks face server issues or downtime which affects the working of banks and customers as well. Server downtime or outage leads to delayed payments or failed transactions which in turn causes loss to banks and customers get annoyed as well. Therefore, banking servers and applications need to be quality tested and assured to avoid server outage and ensure high performing applications under all load conditions.

4. Data security from cyber-threats need security testing:

Banks deals with crucial and confidential customer data and therefore the safety and privacy of data are of utmost importance. Banks ensure all possible efforts to save the data from cyber-attacks. But, as technology is evolving, hackers are using all possible means to hack customer data many-a-time.

Therefore, it is very essential to conduct vulnerability testing of banking systems to see there are no security loopholes in the system which can be exploited by cyber attackers.

5. Regulatory compliance necessitates QA testing:

Financial institutions have to comply with certain rules, compliances, and regulations. Therefore, all banking systems need to be QA tested to validate that they are not missing on any open banking API terms and conditions.

6. Cloud-based banking solutions need proper testing:

With the increasing surge of cloud technology, banks are moving their infrastructure to the cloud. Most of the banks have adopted a hybrid cloud model, where they have considered the private cloud for most critical processes and applications, and the public cloud for non-critical processes and applications.

Successful cloud implementation is still a challenge for many financial institutions. Hence, cloud app testing helps in ensuring the smooth functioning of cloud-based banking solutions by ensuring the successful implementation of cloud solutions. This cloud testing process also ensures that data is migrated successfully without any loss, while data migration takes place for the banking systems.

7. Application compatibility requires compatibility testing:

A large population of customers accesses banking applications on different mobile devices, operating systems, and browsers. Therefore, it is essential for banking systems to ensure their banking apps are compatible with various devices, OS, etc. Therefore, mobile app compatibility testing should be leveraged.

8. Seamless app navigation requires usability testing:

As users access the mobile or web apps, they must navigate to the exact page the user is looking for and should deliver easy and simple navigation through the app. Thus, to ensure the app allows easy and proper navigation and gives accurate output against the input given by the user,usability testing of banking applications and web apps is necessary.

9. Equal access of app to differently-abled people necessitates accessibility testing:

Since banking services are availed by almost every section of society which includes a differently-abled population as well, hence it becomes a mandate to have such applications that follow all accessibility regulations and enables easy access to a differently-abled population to ensure inclusivity and to fulfill societal responsibility.

10. Effective AI implementation requires AI Testing:

The banking sector is constantly striving to adopt AI to enable advanced data analytics, reduce fraudulent practices, and save considerable cost and time. According to an April 2019 report from IHS Markit, the business value of AI in global banking will reach $300 billion by 2030. Thus, AI testing of the banking system is essential to help the banking sector enable effective AI implementation to ensure innovation and deliver exceptional customer experience.

Conclusion

Today, the banking industry is rapidly evolving and moving towards digitalization. Banking applications are an essential part of the banking industry and these applications need to deliver an unmatched experience to customers in terms of quality, performance, usability, reliability, security, etc.

Hence, banking systems should leverage quality assurance to ensure seamless banking apps are enabled for their customers to deliver a great customer experience. Therefore, banking systems require robust end-to-end digital testing of their systems by next-gen testing services provider to get high-quality banking applications to deliver a seamless user experience.

The post What Makes Quality Assurance Essential for Banking Systems? first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. How to Evolve from Quality Assurance to Quality Engineering 2. The Big Burst – Choices, Challenges, and Complexities 3. Why QA needs an intervention? 4. But – How to evolve from QA to QE? 5. QE – More than a Vowel Change

How to Evolve from Quality Assurance to Quality Engineering

The Big Burst – Choices, Challenges, and Complexities

Why QA needs an intervention?

But – How to evolve from QA to QE?

QE – More than a Vowel Change

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Contents 1. What is Penetration Testing? 2. What are the types of Penetration Testing? 3. Why Perform Penetration Testing? 4. Reasons why Penetration Testing is Important 5. TestingXperts’ Pen Testing Capabilities

Cybersecurity has become the prime concern for every service organization these days. Organizations, unacquainted with the cyber-attacks and the harm it can cause to the systems are falling prey to these attacks. Therefore, the most appropriate way to secure the organization is to focus on comprehensive security testing techniques. The effective testing approach to assess the current security posture of the system is known as penetration testing also known as ‘Pen Testing’.

What is Penetration Testing?

Pen testing aims to identify vulnerabilities and risks in the system which may impact the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data by emulating a real DDoS attack. In this approach, the organization employs security analysts who work as hackers (ethical hackers) to identify the uncovered security loopholes.

The only thing that separates a penetration tester from an attacker is permission. A pen tester will always have consent from the owner of the computing resources that are being tested and will be accountable to provide a report. The objective of a penetration test is to validate the current security implementation and identify the vulnerabilities with the updated attack set.

Most of the pen testers are hired just to find one hole, however, in most of the cases, they are expected to keep looking past the first hole so that additional threats and vulnerabilities can be identified and fixed. It is important for the pen-testers to keep comprehensive notes about how the tests were performed so that the results can be validated and if there are any issues that are uncovered can be resolved.

These days, companies are following the “defense in depth” methodology, in which multiple independent network layers and the OSI layers are checked for vulnerabilities. This methodology means that no single security-control catastrophe can bring down your IT infrastructure. This approach defends the networks and systems through the use of various simultaneous protection schemes.

What are the types of Penetration Testing?

Black Box Penetration Testing:

In the type of black-box penetration testing, the tester plays a similar role as a hacker, with no knowledge upon the targeting system. This method helps to sort out the vulnerabilities that can be exploited from the outside network. The penetration testers performing this testing practice should be able to create their target network by considering the observations. To perform the black box pen testing, the tester should be familiar with the methods of manual penetration testing and automated scanning tools.

Advantages:  -This testing doesn’t require an expert tester as it doesn’t specify the usage of any programming language -Testing is performed by considering the user point-of-view -The tester verifies the differences by examining the actual system and expected specifications

White Box Penetration Testing:

The process is the opposite method of black-box penetration testing. The testers are provided with complete access to architecture documents, source code and more. This testing practice helps the testers to perform static code analysis by improving the familiarity with the source code, debuggers, and the usage of tools. This method is a comprehensive assessment method of testing to identify external and internal vulnerabilities. 

Advantages: -This testing practice ensures that all independent paths are exercised -Discovers the errors related to typography and performs syntax checking -Ensures to verify all the logical decisions along with the true/false values -Identifies the errors that occur as a result of logical flow and actual execution

Grey Box Penetration Testing:

In this method of testing, the tester is provided with user-level knowledge. In addition to this, the testers will be provided with partial knowledge or access to the web application and internal network. 

Advantages: -This method doesn’t require the need for internal information related to program functions and other operations -In this testing practice, the tester does not require any need to access source code, as the method is unbiased and non-intrusive

Why Perform Penetration Testing?

A pen test is generally performed to find vulnerabilities and fix them before an attacker does. Sometimes, the IT department is aware of the reported vulnerabilities but still needs an external expert to officially report them so that the management is sure of the vulnerabilities and can fix them properly. Having a second set of eyes to corroborate all the vulnerabilities is always a good security practice. Let’s find out the reasons why performing pen testing is important.

Reasons why Penetration Testing is Important

1. Meeting compliance: There has been a mandate in the payment card industry to follow the PCI-DSS regulations for an annual and ongoing penetration testing. A pen-test allows the enterprises to mitigate the real risks associated with the network.

2. Maintaining confidentiality, revenue and goodwill: Failure to protect the confidentiality of the data can result in legal consequences and a loss of goodwill. A security attack can affect the accounting records, hampering the revenue of the organization. Penetration testing as a service not only helps the enterprises discover the amount of time that is taken for an attacker to breach the system but also helps in confirming the companies to prepare the security teams in order to re-mediate the threat.

3. To verify secure configurations: If the security team of an organization is doing a good job, and are confident of their actions and the final results, the penetration reports verify them. Having an outside entity acts as a confirming agent of whether the security of the system provides a view that is lacking the internal preferences. An outside entity can also measure the team’s efficiency as security operators. It helps in identifying the gaps in the system.

4. Security training for network staff: Penetration testing companies allows security personnel to recognize and respond to a cyber attack types properly. For instance, if the penetration tester is able to compromise a system without letting anyone know about it effectively, this could be indicated as a failure to train staff on proper security monitoring effectively.

5. Testing new technology implementation: Testing the technology, before it goes into the production stage is considered to be a perfect time. Performing a penetration test on new technologies, before they go into production often saves time and money as it is easier to fix the vulnerabilities and gaps before the application goes live.

TestingXperts’ Pen Testing Capabilities

TestingXperts holds a rich expertise in security testing and is catering to diverse business needs. TestingXperts have been serving clients across different industry verticals for more than a decade now.  Our web application penetration testing services exposes vulnerabilities in applications and minimizes the risks of the application. Moreover, our efficient pen-testers ensure that the software code of the application is benchmarked for increased quality assurance.

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Implementing automated testing has become a necessity to meet today’s agile environment. Repetition of software tests during the development cycles is needed to ensure quality. However, repeating the tests manually can be costly and time-consuming. Therefore, automated tests are preferred as they can be run over and over again at no additional cost and are agile than manual tests. QA managers have started implementing automated testing for accomplishing their tight regression testing cycles. The major advantage of automated tests is their capability to reduce the time from days to hours to run repetitive tests.

However, still, various QA managers and test engineers are reluctant to adopt or migrate to automated testing due to long training cycles and high investment. To overcome the test automation challenge, TestingXperts has an intelligent test automation framework ‘Tx-Automate’ that not only helps in performing a specific task, but also provides a solution where different tools can do their job in an integrated manner. In this infographic, we will showcase the key benefits of Tx-Automate.

Achieve Quality at Speed with ‘Tx-Automate

With ‘Tx-Automate’, TestingXperts helped a leading insurance company meet its functional and automated testing needs. Tx-Automate helped the client improve productivity, increase predictability, reduce testing cycle time, and lower testing costs.

Interested? Connect with us to build a comprehensive Test Automation strategy that brings specialized best practices to help you achieve your business objectives.

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The post Achieve Quality at Speed with ‘Tx-Automate’ first appeared on TestingXperts.