Validation phase - System Testing - Security Testing, Stress Testing, Performance Testing

Security Testing

Security testing attempts to verify that protection mechanisms built into a system will, in fact, protect it from improper penetration. During security testing, password cracking, unauthorized entry into the software, network security are all taken into consideration. The six basic security concepts that need to be covered by security testing are: confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization and non-repudiation.

Stress Testing

Stress testing executes a system in a manner that demands resources in abnormal quantity, frequency, or volume. The following types of tests may be conducted during stress testing are:
- Special tests may be designed that generate ten interrupts per second, when one or two is the average rate.
- Input data rates may increase by an order of magnitude to determine how input functions will respond.
- Test cases that require maximum memory or other resources.
- Test cases that may cause excessive hunting for disk resident data.
- Test cases that may cause thrashing in a virtual operating system.

Performance Testing

Performance testing of a web site is basically the process of understanding how the web application and its operating environment responds at various user load levels. In general, we want to measure the response time, throughput and utilization of the web site while simulating attempts by virtual users to simultaneously access the site. One of the main objectives of performance testing is to maintain a web site with low response time, high throughput, and low utilization.