Test Strategy for mobile banking apps

There are many challenges a QA tester faces while planning the testing strategy for mobile banking application. I have listed some of the most important challenges that needs to be addressed in order to have an effective test strategy for such mobile banking apps

1. Strict security regulation- Regulators have a policy of Zero tolerance for security breaches. Banks must protect the private information of customer data, as well as the assets in their accounts. The mobile testing process must back this up with a secure testing environment.

2. Devices and Operating Systems- Big banks service many users and need to support all operating systems, all versions of each operating system, all devices, and all versions of each device, including their unique screen size. In such situations having test matrix for all compatible environments is a must.

3. Complex Data & test data management- How does the bank know that the information presented by the mobile application reflects the bank backend databases? Is the balance shown to the user the actual balance? Mobile testers need to have a pool of accounts always available that can be used by their testing solutions. There needs to be a mechanism to lock a user for specific test writing

4. Early Adoption- As the technology evolves from ATM's to the latest banking applications using smart watches, banking applications are quick to respond to new technology. Hence there is always a provision for adopting new technologies.

5. Privacy is essential- Countries have secrecy laws demanding that banks protect customer information. If a banking application is compromised, not only can that bank be liable for civil damages to the customer, it is in violation of the law and can face heavy fines and censure.

6. Need to Scale- For every change, even the most minor ones, a bank must run a battery of regression tests to make sure older batches of code weren't impacted by the changes. The number of tests and the execution time of single execution suite can take quite some time. The number of engineers required for automation and manual testing can scale to the hundreds. A testing tool must enable parallel/serial execution on numerous devices to establish high scalability and high portability of tests.

7. Lots of legacy- Banks were among the first to introduce computers to their industry, so they have applications with programming code dating back 50 years. When some of your infrastructure contains computing instructions dating back to age old you must test to make sure that new functions don’t affect that code badly. Banks spend up to 80% of their testing efforts on regression testing.

8. Multiple External Applications- Banks receive and send data from multiple sources in equities, fixed income, commodities, derivatives, and more. Most data does not originate from the application it was used. Manoeuvring from external databases to internal ones, and handling all of the updates is a big challenge for banks quality assurance departments

There could be more challenges, but i guess by addressing these, the others will fall by as a sub set.

Security Testing - Types

Thinking about the different types of Security testings that we can do and also classifying them into the right buckets is very important.To summarise them Black box Testing ( Pen Testing)
  • Little or no information is provided about the target
  • Testing techniques start with looking for specific vulnerability signs but quickly moves into unscripted exploitation , trial & error
  • Testing focusses on manipulating inputs and evaluating the responses
  • A form of reverse engineering of exposed functionality
White box or Crystal box testing ( Not Pen Testing)
  • Includes security focussed testing like - Source code reviews, authenticated vulnerability assessments & configuration audits
  • More of a scripted test looking for specific items
Grey box Testing ( Optimised Pen testing
  • Testing that uses black box techniques with greater visibility and/or access to the application to optimise testing

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