Mphasis Partners with Sauce Labs to Reduce Testing Time, reduces test time by 75%

Mphasis an Information Technology (IT) solutions provider specializing in cloud and cognitive services, today announced the continued success of its partnership with Sauce Labs Inc, the leading provider of continuous testing solutions that deliver digital confidence. The partnership between Mphasis and Sauce Labs delivers modern continuous testing technology and best practices enterprises need to build scalable, reliable, high-performance web, and mobile applications necessary for success in the digital era.

 

The partnership between Mphasis and Sauce Labs continues to drive significant business results for joint customers across all verticals, particularly those with User Interface (UI)-reliant applications. Customers using the Sauce Labs Continuous Testing Cloud in combination with services from Mphasis achieve up to a 75% reduction in testing time per release. All this, while reducing costs on an average of 30-40% as a result of no longer needing to maintain on-premise testing infrastructure or mobile device labs. Besides, by testing across thousands of browser, OS, and device combinations, and leveraging test analytics, customers increase release velocity by an average of 40%. This translates from one release a month to weekly or even daily releases.  

 

With an applied technology mindset, Mphasis is focusing on optimizing software agility and speed by implementing transformational practices. Mphasis’ proven strength in providing an end-to-end solution is combined with Sauce Labs’ ability to make testing fast, reliable, and easy. This has enabled enterprises to deliver high-quality applications at speed, maximizing business value, and accelerating time to market leading to significant market advantage for customers including one of the largest brokerages and banking firms in the U.S.

 

“Mphasis is excited about the success this collaboration with Sauce Labs has brought to our clients,” said Dinesh Venugopal, President, Mphasis Direct and Digital. “Automated testing with Sauce Labs fits seamlessly as part of the Mphasis vision of Zero QA, and we continue to leverage it throughout development cycles to ensure delivery of high-quality web and mobile applications. By enabling organizations to make quick and quality releases in today’s fast-changing digital landscape, Mphasis is evolving into an agile partner for our clients while using knowledge sharing sessions to scale opportunities to other enterprises. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Sauce Labs to help businesses drive their DevOps initiatives to the next level.”

 

“Our partner ecosystem plays a key role in helping customers grow their digital businesses,” said Jon Mills, Vice President of Global Channels, Sauce Labs. “Continuous testing continues to grow in strategic importance for organizations that focus on creating and delivering the best possible user experience for their customers. We’re excited to partner with Mphasis to help organizations deliver the highest quality web and mobile applications to their customers.”  

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9Apps Announces InDev program worth USD 20 million to support independent and small startup developers

9Apps a part of UCWeb, one of the most popular Android app marketplaces just announced its InDev Program. The program is allocated a whopping USD 20 million budget to help Indian independent and startup developers with specially designed solutions, more specifically in user acquisition and monetization. The program aims to help over 100 independent and small developers in 2 years timeframe.

"According to our research, there are lots of challenges faced by independent and startup developers. It is not easy for them to get as much brand exposure for their apps as the big players can. UCWeb and 9Apps are committed to building a healthy ecosystem where local users can download quality app and games they like, and developers are able to enjoy fruitful financial return for providing excellent apps and games."- said Mr. Rober Bu, General Manager, UCWeb India.

UC Browser Mini

Highlights on InDev programs includes zero cost promotion support for developers, 100% revenue sharing with qualified developers for a certain period of time. InDev program will also give support for testing, localization. 

“Through our InDev Program, we want to encourage developers to focus on building the app and game itself, while 9Apps will take care of the rest, including marketing, promotion, user acquisition and monetization, creating a hassle-free environment for them to grow. We welcome all Indian independent developers to work together with us, to provide better apps and games for users, and also gain cash rewards for their efforts,” he added.

According to Mr. Ebrahim Popat, Country Manager of 9Apps. “Our market insights show that India without doubt is poised to be the next big destination for developers as Indian users have 32 apps on an average, lower than the world average of 42 apps. There is still room to grow. We recently launched 9Apps Trends, India’s first comprehensive local app market analytic service that provides app trends, data analysis and in-depth market reports with an aim to build a platform where Indian developers can catch up with the trends in the app world. The InDev Program aims to further address some of the critical challenges faced by Indian developers.” 

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Accenture rolls out Accenture MyWizard , an intelligent automation platform consisting virtual agents to assist human tech workers

Ever since I started working in IT industry or more specifically in testing role the buzzword has always been 'automation', Quality engineers would have heard this word zillions of times in their career and it seems to be the only solution to reduce your cycle time, increase productivity and efficiency. In 6 plus years of my experience I have worked with 3 companies and 7 managers across different projects, domains , technology but they all seems to have a common understanding of improving testing efficiency by automation. The term has a very broad meaning and it took me a good amount of time just to understand the capabilities and limitations of the same and lot can be written about it, however we will stick to the agenda of this article and discuss the latest development on this front which comes from pioneer IT firm Accenture.

Accenture just announced roll out of its AI backed intelligent automation platform which not only handle parts of Test Engineer's job but also assist project managers in resourcing, agile development methodologies and helps take better informed decisions with the help of data science and analytics.  Accenture myWizard, that enables smarter, more innovative and more efficient application services consisting of systems integration and application development and management. The platform combines Accenture’s industry and technology assets and business knowledge across 40 industries with intelligent automation, including artificial intelligence at its core.

Accenture myWizard employs virtual data scientists to help human workers
manage projects through better use of analytics

"Organizations can use Accenture myWizard to become up to approx. 60 percent more productive by automating task-related work and enabling them to focus on more strategic work."

The platform is build by bringing numerous Accenture proprietary industry assets, intelligent analytics tools and methods, as well as tools from across Accenture's alliance partner ecosystem. As you might have already guessed, the platform mines data from Accenture's vast cumulative knowledge base of different industries across verticals, process flows and key performance indicators. MyWizard is hosted on Microsoft Azure and its plug and play architecture is said to be 'tomorrow-proof' with the abilities to add further capabilities as the Artificial Intelligence knowledge base matures over the time.

Accenture myWizard has a number of virtual agents that use machine learning to collaborate with human co-workers to manage projects, apply analytics to support business goals, advise on a range of judgement based tasks and monitor numerous aspects of Agile development.

• Intelligent Data Scientist: This scientist helps identify data patterns and mines program information to provide IT and business users with the ability to make more insight-based decisions.

• Virtual Testing Savant: This agent provides advice to human testers on a wide-range of judgement-based tasks, such as test planning, test coverage, prioritization and even staffing. It provides test artifacts for reuse and solutions based on past fixes, helping testers spend less time preparing and fixing and more time fine-tuning applications to improve business performance.

• Virtual Scrum Master: This agent monitors numerous aspects of Agile development projects consisting of requirements, releases, metrics and resources – alerting the project manager of any potential issues and providing possible solutions.

Over the past six months Accenture myWizard has been deployed to more than 100 clients globally. Accenture is training approximately 3,000 professionals in Accenture myWizard and plans to deploy the intelligent automation platform to more than 200 clients by the end of August 2016.

The automation world has stepped into another dimension for me with  this announcement, however how many organizations adopt for this platform and continue to work with same will be actual testimony of the efficiency promised by Accenture.

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Android phones running on JellyBean to Lollipop vulnerable to Android Mediaserver Bug

Security researchers from Trend Micro has claimed to find out a major security issue which can render Android devices apparently dead, non-responsive with a lifeless screen. The firm claimed that security flaw exists from Android 4.3 jelly bean to the latest version i.e. Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. If the claims are true than more than half of devices running on Android Operating system are on risk, matter becomes more serious when you get to know that no patch is applied to Android Open Source Project (AOSP) to fix this vulnerability since May 2015. 

The news broke out just after, Google announced a security update to fix Stagefright vulnerability which could have affected as many as 950 million devices. The latest flaw can be exploited in two ways, one through malicious apps and other through evil website specifically created to mislead users and hack the device to render it useless. The app method is more dangerous as it can cause long term effects if its embedded with an MKV file that registers itself to auto-start whenever the device boots would cause the OS to crash every time it is turned on.

Image for illustration purpose only

Vulnerability Description:

The vulnerability lies in the media server service, which is used by Android to index media files that are located on the Android device. This service cannot correctly process a malformed video file using the Matroska container (usually with the .mkv extension). When the process opens a malformed MKV file, the service may crash (and with it, the rest of the operating system).

The vulnerability is caused by an integer overflow when the media server service parses an MKV file. It reads memory out of buffer or writes data to NULL address when parsing audio data.

• This will cause the device to become totally silent and non-responsive. This means that:

• No ring tone, text tone, or notification sounds can be heard. The user will have have no idea of an incoming call/message, and cannot even accept a call. Neither party will hear each other.

• The UI may become very slow to respond, or completely non-responsive. If the phone is locked, it cannot be unlocked.

Potential threat scenarios: 

As mentioned above, there are two ways that this attack can be exploited: the user can either visit a malicious site or download a malicious app.

There are many common techniques that could be used to lure a user to a malicious site. We’ve discussed in the past how repackaged apps pose a problem for users who may have a hard time differentiating legitimate apps from repackaged ones.

Whatever means is used to lure in users, the likely payload is the same. Ransomware is likely to use this vulnerability as a new “threat” for users: in addition to encrypting on the device being encrypted, the device itself would be locked out and unable to be used. This would increase the problems the user faces and make them more likely to pay any ransom.

Further research into Android – especially the mediaserver service – may find other vulnerabilities that could have more serious consequences to users, including remote code execution.

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Security researchers hack 3 politicians over public WiFi to spread awareness

Are you one of those who breathe bits and bytes over the air all the time, then this article is a must read for you. Recently an investigation conducted in London has showcased how easy it is to get access of your email, finance , social networking and other details when you are using public WiFi in places such as Cafes, Hotels, Metro Stations etc. In Jan 2015, a similar experiment showcased how a 7 year old hacked public wifi.

The investigation was done jointly by Security and privacy software company F-Secure and penetration testing expert Mandalorian Security Services and Cyber Security Research Institute to conduct the test. The test was conducted on three politicians with their consent.

Image for illustration only

The politicians, deliberately selected from the most powerful chambers in UK politics, were Rt. Hon. David Davis MP, Mary Honeyball MEP and Lord Strasburger. The exercise was carried out with the permission of the politicians who, despite holding important positions within the different parliaments, admitted that they had received no formal training or information about the relative ease with which computers can be breached while using public Wi-Fi – a service they all admitted to using regularly.

Commenting on his email being accessed, Davis said: “Well, it’s pretty horrifying, to be honest. What you have extracted was a very tough password, tougher than most people use. It’s certainly not ‘Password’.” Alarmingly, the password would have been broken no matter how strong it was. Public Wi-Fi is inherently insecure - usernames and passwords are shown in plain text in the back of a Wi-Fi access point, making them simple for a hacker to steal.

To underline the risk, an email was drafted by ethical hackers Mandalorian and left in his drafts folder destined for the national press, announcing his defection to UKIP. His PayPal account was then compromised, as it used the same username and password as his Gmail – a common habit.

In the case of Lord Strasburger, a Voice over IP (VoIP) call he made from a hotel room was intercepted and recorded using technology freely available on the Internet, and relatively easy to master. Strasburger said, “That’s very worrying. This is very powerful equipment. The thought that a beginner could be up and running in a very few hours is really worrying. I think it proves that people (when they are using technology) need to know a lot more about it. In the end, they have to look after themselves, because it really is down to you, no one else is going to do it.”

Mary Honeyball MEP, who sits on the EU committee responsible for the ‘We Love Wi-Fi’ campaign, was browsing the Internet in a café when the ethical hacker sent her a message seemingly from Facebook which invited her to log back into her account, as it had timed out. This was how she unwittingly gave her login credentials to the hacker, who then accessed her Facebook account.

Honeyball, who was using a tablet issued to her only days before by the European Parliament’s technology officers, was particularly concerned about the lack of advice she had been given. “I think something should be done because we all think that passwords make the whole thing secure. I always thought that was the point of passwords. I am surprised and shocked,” she said.

Each hack not only demonstrated the simple steps a hacker can take to circumvent password protected services, but also how the personal data could be used for further attacks. “The average person will think that a hacker knowing which sports team I follow is a pretty useless piece of information,” said Steve Lord, director at Mandalorian. “But once he knows that, he can craft a phishing email specifically for you and your likes, knowing that you will be more likely to open it. Once you click on a link within that email or open an attachment, they have you – they will load malware onto your devices and then you will end up giving away all of your information. Not only that, but your company information too, if you use your devices to access the company network.”

Sean Sullivan, Security Advisor at F-Secure, has this advice for people using public Wi-Fi: “People shouldn’t be afraid to use public Wi-Fi – it’s a fantastic service. But they must understand that there are risks and it is their responsibility to protect themselves. This is simply done using a piece of software called a Virtual Private Network (or VPN). For phones and tablets, these are available as an app. Our Freedome VPN will encrypt all data travelling from the device to the network, meaning that the hacker will steal nothing of use. Simply turning it on gives you the best protection you can possibly have to stay safe over public Wi-Fi, so you can focus on what you’re doing instead of worrying about staying safe.”

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How To - Setup Selenium Java project in Eclipse IDE

Step by Step process to setup Selenium WebDriver project in Eclipse IDE.

Step1: Download Java JDK and install if not installed already.

Download Link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html

Step2: Download Eclipse if not installed already on your system.

Download Link: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ 

Step3: Set up Workspace for your project in eclipse.

Navigate to File Menu -> Workspace . Specify folder path where you want to store all files related to your project.

Step4: Create New Project

Go to File Menu -> New -> Select Java Project

Give a name to your project , select Java Runtime Environment

Next - > Finish

You can see a project is created with src folder for storing source code and class files. JRE library is also attached.

Step5: Download Selenium Server and Client for WebDriver.

Download Link: http://docs.seleniumhq.org/download/

Step6: Extract Jar files from Selenium Client zip folder.

Step7: Add Selenium Jars to your project.

To do this make a Folder in project (Right click on project name -> New -> Folder) and name it as lib.

Now, drag Selenium Server jar (selenium-server-standalone-2.39.0) for version 2.39.0 to lib folder.

Open unzipped client folder and drag Client jar (drag jar not having srcs to lib folder eg: add jar with name "selenium-java-2.39.0" and not "selenium-java-2.39.0-srcs" to your project lib )

Select both jars in lib folder -> Right click -> Add Build path

After doing this automatically Referenced Libraries folder should be created and jars should be attached there.

Step8: Download Junit

Download Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/junit/files/junit/

Add Junit jar to project same way as we added Webdriver jar files in Step7.

Step9: Record a web test using Selenium IDE extension for Firefox.

Step10: Export Test Case as  - Java/ Junit4 / WebDriver

Save test case in src folder of your eclipse project with .java as extension.

Step11: To run your test case , Right click anywhere in code area -> Run As -> JUnit Test

Below is the video for all these steps for reference.

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