6 Software Glitches Highlighting the Significance of Testing

Security incidents comprising software glitch, data breach, and system breakdown are threatening for worldwide enterprises. As a consequence, companies are developing a practical attitude towards the security of business-critical data and enterprise apps.

Security testing is considered extremely important in the app development and testing situation. Organizations are investing billions of dollars to create a secure ecosystem. However, some organizations are still unable to secure their systems that, as a result, leads to a software glitch.

To help you get a better understanding as to why you need QA testing, the following top software glitches experienced by the enterprises in the near past will be an eye-opener:

1. Recall by Fiat Chrysler

In 2017, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV talked claimed that more than 162,000 Chrysler Pacifica minivans were released because of an unexpected software glitch. This story was told to the public in January 2018. As a result of this glitch, the vehicle used to stop in the middle of the road that led to accidents.

After an investigation, it was discovered that the software defect caused the vehicle’s engine control module to erroneously evaluate the operating status of the engine, resulting in an abrupt stop.

According to the Italian-American automaker, users encountered this situation when they were driving at a low speed or when they started the vehicle.

Any minor error in automobile sector can be life-threatening. In order to overcome this situation, continuous testing and deployment play a critical role. It guarantees that the software is checked and upgraded instantly. Therefore, QA engineers are required to create strategic testing and software quality assurance capabilities.

2. Welsh NHS IT failure

A computer failure was encountered by the Whales’ department of Health and Social Services back in January 2018. As a consequence, the staff could not access the patient’s data. National Cyber Security Centre confirmed that the failure was because of the technical errors and created a lot of disturbance. This resulted in backlog, as the staff was incapable to communicate the patients for changing the activities and the systems were not available.

Such situations can be avoided by focusing more on continuous testing and deployment. This will assist in checking errors regularly and update the software.

3. Equifax Data Breach

In 2017, a customer credit reporting agency, Equifax, announced that it encountered massive data breach. This was one of the biggest cybersecurity incidents that resulted in a loss of confidential information of more than a hundred million people. Private information such as Driver’s License numbers, birthdays, addresses, and social security numbers got leaked by the hackers. As per reports, criminals wanted to get access to the data by breaking US web app vulnerability.

Digital transformation has played a vital role in bringing huge amounts of information online. Therefore, protecting data and checking apps and software systems for susceptibilities has become very important. This is because vulnerability assessment is the initial step in the direction of an effective security testing system.

4. Bitcoin Nodes crash

Bitcoin experienced nodes crash because of memory leakages, back in April 2017. All the investors and the operators were amused when nearly six hundred Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) nodes fell extremely. As a consequence, it came down from 720 to 180. As an investigation, BU node operator claimed that issue became big due to a bug which was being subjugated to harm the network.

Network penetration testing and security testing assists companies to check the network for all sorts of susceptibilities. Digital technologies are very beneficial in most of the situations but scary in other scenarios. Testing for security gaps actually assists in guaranteeing the full proof security of the system.

5. Glitch with iPhones

iOS 11 encountered a malfunction that was activated at 12:15 am, in December 2017. As a result, smartphones with third-party apps sent frequent notifications like reminders on health and work out apps. This results in continuous restarting of an app. Apple did not respond for some time on this issue. Therefore, they released a software update iOS 11.2 to fix the problems of other features also.

Performance testing assists in guaranteeing that the software app provokes the needed result under many probable scenarios.

6. South Carolina Lottery glitch

The Christmas of 2017 was undeniably a jubilant day for the individuals who betted on the South Carolina lottery. Numerous lottery tickets got published because of a computer glitch, this summed up to nearly 19.6 million dollars. This game was shut down later. However, this issue was highlighted after the amount was transferred to eight people.

This shows that load and performance testing are of incredible value for the organizations that have high traffic on online transactions.

In the end, the discussion above makes it evident that Software Testing and Quality Assurance is not just a by-product during the software development procedure. Plans and decisions regarding software testing are increasingly becoming important. Although the incidents mentioned in this blog are from different industries, they require different testing capabilities in order to deliver the promised business value to end users.