Test Data Security Audits

Protecting data from cyber-attacks requires an organization to conduct regular security audits. These can be annual, quarterly, or monthly and may be influenced by internal policies or regulatory requirements.

A successful security audit should identify vulnerabilities and provide a snapshot of your current situation. This will help your team prioritize and plan remediation activities.

Test Data Management

Inadequate test data management can result in inaccurate and costly software defects. It also can delay deployment and lead to a negative customer experience. To prevent these issues, companies must use dependable automated software to create test data that closely mimics real-life production environment data.

Traditionally, testers have used production data for testing purposes, but it’s often difficult to work with due to its size, compliance with privacy regulations, and availability. Moreover, it can be expensive to mask and replicate production data for testing purposes.

A TDM process identifies data requirements, automates the creation of non-production test data, and enables testers to easily access this data. The resulting process improves QA efficiency and reduces costs. It also helps organizations meet regulatory requirements and ensures the integrity of production data. 

Test Data Security

Security audits are in-depth evaluations of your business’s information systems, comparing internal policies to external criteria and advising on areas for improvement. They examine all aspects of your IT infrastructure, from physical components to how you store and transmit data.

In many cases, a security audit will also serve as a penetration test. During a penetration test, an ethical hacker (or third party), works to gain escalating levels of access to your internal system, identifying vulnerabilities the previous round of audits missed.

The security audit will identify data risks that can lead to breaches, helping you prioritize remediation efforts and bolster your overall security posture. It will also help you meet compliance standards, such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 attestation. To minimize the risk of data exposure, sensitive information used in tests should be obfuscated or replaced with fictional data to protect individuals’ privacy. Robust data handling and storage practices must also be in place to ensure that data is securely deleted or stored once the testing process is complete.

Test Data Refresh

Test Data Management (TDM) is the process of ensuring that high-quality test data of the correct format is provisioned in a suitable environment at an appropriate time. The data must be accurate, structured, and in the right quantity to meet specific testing requirements. This includes testing all possible code paths including negative paths and boundary values, generating data for security testing, and providing data that mirrors production systems in order to test for issues.

Many organizations face challenges when preparing and provisioning the test data needed to perform their tests. Using real production data offers the broadest test coverage, but it also requires more storage, imposes performance costs, and can reveal sensitive information. Test data sub-setting helps reduce the amount of data required for testing while preserving important relationships and dependencies. This helps minimize the impact on the production system and reduces data-related test errors. Refreshing the test data regularly keeps it aligned with application changes and updates, avoiding stale data-related defects in the product.

Test Data Reporting

The most important aspect of test data security audits is to ensure the results of a testing report are accurate. This requires a controlled environment with a dedicated test system for producing reports. This prevents conflicts and avoids wasting time tracking down issues that are not real.

This is especially critical in regulated industries where compliance standards are stringent. It also reduces the risk of losing sensitive information through data breaches and you need Synthetic Data in it as well.

Often, data security audits are performed to discover gaps and weaknesses in the organization’s existing security mechanisms. This can be performed by internal teams or third-party penetration testers. Performing these voluntary audits can save a business from costly and stressful external audits. They can also help the company save money by identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities that would have otherwise been overlooked.