IAM: The Technology Behind Digital Security

By Thejaswini J

Today’s world is faced with increasing threats in the cyber and data space, which is driving banks, government bodies, hospitals, businesses, IT organizations, etc. to strengthen their security protocols and access rights to enterprise data. A security practice involves investment in secure, high-utility and efficient technologies to make security a key business driver.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) assures the right people get access to the right resources to execute their jobs without exposing the same to inordinate risk and unauthorized personnel or parties. Incorporating Authentication and Authorization of resources in an enterprise is imperative to access management. It helps maintain security and achieve governance by controlling access of personnel & authorized third parties to secure & manage privileged accounts, especially in a cloud-based / mobile environment.

Scope 

Wherever there is confidential digital data, there comes IAM. It reflects on the ongoing as well as future trends in its evolving sphere and enables stronger security measures. The IAM market is dominantly influenced, driven and shaped by the increasing need for mobile adoption and transitioning to cloud computing. Some of the latest technologies and approaches help organizations overcome issues associated with data security.

IAM can become a potential business-enabler for IT organizations, with a proper strategic placement in digital security space, resulting in successful delivery of cutting-edge solutions. Ways to making IAM a major success:

• Keep Customization to the Minimum: Conventional ways of IAM define building custom systems that comprise all the processes necessary to grant authentication and control. Although customized solutions unify features and appearance, they cover up the complexity beneath. A configurable IAM solution offers greater value and minimizes the reliance on developers, along with reducing the expenditure. 
• Reducing Complexity: Consolidating identities and provisioning authorization, SSO, logins, and audit requirements offer several benefits. More the identities, more is the requirement for provisioning in multiple places, and more are the passwords. Identification of a single source and implementing it across the organization is better than the effort required for remembering multiple passwords. 
• Provisioning the Right Way: One constant thing in IAM is change. Change in the roles of people, new systems and processes make re-provisioning and de-provisioning of users a priority. It is important to get the provisioning right with a keen emphasis on configuration. 
• A Business’s Accountability: Although, IT plays a key role in provisioning an account and delegating rights within a system, any respective line of business / domain, if involved, will be accountable if something goes wrong. Hence, the latest IAM solutions are built by focusing more on the business, instead giving 100% authority to IT alone. It becomes easier for the business to make decisions about who should gain access to what. So, provisioning takes place automatically, with lesser dependence on IT. 
• Enabling Automation: IAM brings with it the ability to streamline and automate cumbersome processes, which is a big selling point for enterprises. Automating an IT-centric and complex IAM approach that saves time and money minimizes numerous errors. Thus, an enterprise and end users can do several things for which they have always had to rely on IT.

The ability of organizations in adopting new technologies and evolving user demands have kept the requirement of IAM going. SPAN’s IAM framework addresses a broad spectrum of mission-critical needs to provide appropriate access across diverse technology environments and meet the ever increasing compliance requirements. Our IAM solutions are business-aligned and help enterprises develop mature IAM capabilities for their initiatives.

Automation Testing: Improve the Quality & Efficiency of Software

By Harikrishna Miriyala

Testing is an important part of software development. Every software development team tests its products, but software most times has defects. Test engineers strive to find them before the product release, but the defects often reappear, even with the best manual testing process. Test automation is the best way to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and coverage of your software testing.

Companies face challenges in adopting automation tools for their testing. It is mainly due to high investment cost for the tool and difficulty in selecting the best automation framework.

SPAN’s Test Automation Accelerator helps clients to overcome these challenges and speed up the automation of its functional and regression testing. The robust framework enables early automation, which helps to develop test scripts during the design and development phases of the software development life cycle (SDLC).

SPAN has strong capabilities of conducting end-to-end test automation for applications built in multiple technologies. It supports different test tools like HP Quick Test Professional and Win Runner, IBM Rational Functional Tester, Test Partner and Borland Silk Test, VSTS Coded UI and Telerik Test Studio & Testing framework, in addition to open source tools such as Selenium. It allows for frequent releases of applications by reducing maintenance efforts without compromising on the quality of testing.

Key Features and Benefits:

• Early automation: After confirmation of test requirements, test automation can be conducted concurrently with the preparation of manual test cases. 
• Pre-built libraries: Reduces the cost of developing an automation test suite by up to 30%. They enable creation of automated scripts after documenting the logical flow of test cases. 
• Offline automation: Less investment in test tool licenses by limiting the need for test tool licenses to the test execution phase. Licenses are required only during test execution and creation of the object repository for the application under test (AUT). 
• Reusable components: Automated test cases based on the design of the business processes result in higher reuse of scripts. 
• Faster time to market and increased ROI: Gives competitive advantage and enables routing of cost savings to other IT and business initiatives. 
• Automation methodology: Reduces cost by enabling business users and manual testers to develop automated test scripts by using a pre-defined framework. 

Having seen the benefits, the importance of automation testing will be increasingly realized across varied domains to accelerate processes. "Automation Framework" would find superior importance and acceptance in the industry. If an organization intends to draw the benefits of automation as promised by tool vendors, it needs to explore the tool as a complement to manual testing. It also means implementing a sturdy test methodology and training the testing team regarding the detailed sketches of the selected tool in a unique development environment of an organization.

Smartphone - A New Bot Serving Digital Healthcare

By Venkatesh D

Digital healthcare has reached homes and individuals through smartphones and wearable devices,
thus reducing space and time between providers, caregivers, patients and pharmacies with better coordination and continuum of care.

The healthcare IT market is projected to reach USD 228.8 billion by 2020 as per the market prediction. Currently, there are close to 0.17 million mobile healthcare apps. Projection is further backed by mobile majors Apple and Google through their new healthcare services like Healthkit and Fit.

Healthcare services include fitness, diet, pharmacy, insurance, community / networking, providers, facilities, paramedics, laboratories, medical schools, regulations and drug administration.

• Smartphone Healthcare Applications – Healthcare apps are present in different roles and features like women / child healthcare assistants, specialist finder, symptom analyzers, potential cause finders, treatment suggestions, facility finders, provider finders, find pharmacists with best prices, community apps for doctors who give tips and participate in open discussions along with patients, fitness enthusiast community to share experiences & thoughts, first aid emergencies, paramedical information and interactive quizzes, restaurant finder based on calorie, carb, fat and protein preferences, diet trackers, recipe finders, diet and fitness coaches, personal assistant apps which track distance, count steps, bites, sips, pounds, snores etc., personal nutritionist, practice management made easy for doctors to track their schedule efficiently, reward point based promotional apps from retailers and services selling healthcare products, social cause, charity and social game apps, neurologist apps for users with cognitive abilities, allergy tip apps which suggest allergy-friendly, gluten-free meals, brain teasers, riddles, logical problems, mind puzzle apps which improve analytical capabilities, apps as personal life coach, acupressure, meditation, yoga assistant, medical emergency apps, headache monitors, clinic locators etc.
  
• Smartphone Healthcare Attachments - Along with inbuilt sensors, portable peripheral phone hardware attachments add extra intelligence to smartphones, enabling them to track oxygen saturation levels, insulin levels, blood, sputum and DNA scanning (by QuantuMDX), visual acuity assessment, optic disc visualization, inner ear visualization (photosensitive smartphone attachments by CellScope), lung function (Bluetooth based spirometer, measures lung functions, by Cohero), heart function (mobile ECG recorder by AliveCor), body sound analysis (wireless stethoscope by Eko Core, non-contact thermometer and a digital stethoscope by CliniCloud), sonography, atrial fibrillation, urine test kit (by Scanadu) and provide interworking with weight scales, blood pressure cuffs, pulse oximeters, incontinence wetness readers, and other such detections.
  
• Smartphone – As a basic telecom device, watch, camera, contacts book, gyroscope, compass, accelerometer, global positioning system, magnetometer, barometer, proximity sensor, remote control, social networking and information gateway, music/radio player, game station, TV, an smartphone entertainer is now finally poised to make its next big debut as an ubiquitous and versatile personal digital healthcare assistant bot. 

Having been successful in covering versatile capabilities of a smartphone, SPAN has proven concepts of digital healthcare in realizing smartphone as a fully functional digital healthcare assistant. SPAN is poised to take digital healthcare service offerings to next levels by using smartphones, wearable and medical devices. This helps improve the overall healthcare experience driven by latest cutting edge technologies like, IoT, big data and analytics.