Trigent’s QA and Testing enables test coverage improvement by 74% for a leading cybersecurity company in the US

The speed at which they’re able to understand the product is impressive. Trigent Software delivers everything that’s asked of them (in terms of software testing and automation) each sprint. The team is excellent at getting up to speed with new technologies. They’re an organized team that gets the job done.

About the client

Our Client is a leading US company that offers Encrypted Document Collaboration and Email for CMMC & ITAR compliance for business & personal use.

The Client’s encrypted email service addresses CMMC requirements for communication and storage of confidential user data & information. At the same time, it allows users to encrypt, store and share their files without fear of vulnerabilities and easily access these files from their computers or mobile devices.

Business challenge

The client is known for its end-to-end encrypted mail service, unrivaled in the industry for its IT security, privacy, and ease of use. Trigent needed to validate the design and rebuild the software as per client requirements based on three critical parameters.

Figure 1 – In the client’s system (shown above left), the servers only store encrypted content, and the decryption keys are only on user devices. Other service providers (pictured above right) may encrypt documents with user-specific keys. Still, these keys are stored on and accessible by the service provider that meant employees or hackers who obtain access to the server can potentially access all user information.

The challenges a tester faces while working on security software result from the complex and diverse IT environments. One needs to conduct testing in multiple environments such as Windows, macOS, Android, iOS devices, and the integrations with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook plugin, Apple Mail, and Gmail for email functionality. The testing team needs to ensure the robustness of a complex process that works on the public and private key encryption mechanisms and assures reliability in an environment where accounts have to be securely transferred and recovered on other devices. Another critical factor is testing complex functionality that encompasses multiple combinations and complex features such as file data sharing, sync, selective sync, file lock/ unlock, permissions, and access.

Trigent solution

Trigent’s continuous testing strategy addressed the requirements with a custom test suite to assure the product was tested and validated in real-time scenarios across various critical areas such as functional, regression, Combinational cross version and cross devices and exploratory. The design of the test solution factored in the unique technical considerations such as:

• Functional testing and validation of the reliability of the distributed key security mechanism
• Black box testing of organization’s proprietary security architecture to ensure secure communications between trusted parties
• Assuring seamless updates or upgrades across distributed end points with zero disruption to business continuity

Functional Testing

Trigent designed to cover various combinations & edge/hand-off scenarios to ensure maximum coverage of application features across both web & mobile. We ran tests across different OS/ device combinations with combinatorial testing to provide early high-risk coverage.

Assurance Coverage

Web Automation

A Selenium-based test framework using Pytest library underpinned the automation strategy and the automated suite covered all the business process flows. An emphasis was placed on the design of test data for the features to ensure adequate coverage.

Smoke test suites performed sanity checks of each new build. Over time, the automation increased to reduce the manual testing regression efforts.

Selenium PyTest Architecutral Diagram

Client benefits

• Achieved 74% automation of regression testing coverage with more features per release
• Significant reduction in test execution cycle time from 100+ hours to 4-5 hours with automation and combinatorial test strategies
• Automation integrated into the build process helped developers gain early insight into the quality within minutes instead of days
• An integrated continuous testing process with the development process resulting in early visibility of the overall application quality
• Product owners can now detect issues across different OS’s and product versions in a short time with tightly integrated Installer Test Automation