In the wake of the CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage last July, which caused 8.5 million devices worldwide to crash, it’s clear that even well-intentioned software updates can lead to catastrophic outages that halt business continuity. The incident caused thousands of organizations worldwide to halt operations, with direct losses among Fortune 500 enterprises alone exceeding $5 billion.

To avoid the next major outage, insurance executives need to implement proactive, comprehensive testing. As the enterprise software stack grows more complex and interdependent, we can’t assume that any new update or version release—for internal products or the hundreds of third-party components an organization might use—will be safe to deploy. What we can do, however, is ensure that proactive, automated testing is embedded into change management tooling.

Continuous testing (CT) ensures that when an update does fail, you know about it long before it affects your users. An effective CT framework embeds testing directly into the delivery pipeline and automatically invokes test cases throughout the software lifecycle, from early development through release. Such a framework employs a much larger pool of tests and executes them more frequently than standard QA testing. It establishes multiple pass/fail data points aligned with predefined requirements. And it’s fully orchestrated and integrated with the CI/CD pipeline, ideally via cloud-based lab and testing infrastructure that can scale elastically as needed.

Here are five steps to implement continuous testing:

1. Integrate testing into the delivery pipeline: Embed testing directly into the delivery pipeline and automatically invoke test cases throughout the software lifecycle, from early development through release.

2. Employ a larger pool of tests: Use a much larger pool of tests and execute them more frequently than standard QA testing.

3. Establish multiple pass/fail data points: Establish multiple pass/fail data points aligned with predefined requirements.

4. Orchestrate and integrate with CI/CD pipeline: Fully orchestrate and integrate with the CI/CD pipeline, ideally via cloud-based lab and testing infrastructure that can scale elastically as needed.

5. Get immediate feedback: With continuous automated testing, get immediate feedback on new software updates or version releases and better identify potential conflicts and risks.

Implementing continuous testing can help insurance executives detect problems earlier, prevent catastrophic outages, and ultimately save millions of dollars in losses.

At Riskwolf, we enable insurers to build and operate parametric insurance at scale using unique real-time data and dynamic risk modeling. With Riskwolf, you can turn real-time data into insurance. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you develop parametric insurance for your business, get in touch with us today.

Source: Security Brief