Penetration Testing in Agile Software Development Projects

Agile development methods are commonly used to iteratively develop the information systems and they can easily handle ever-changing business requirements. Scrum is one of the most popular agile software development frameworks. The popularity is caused by the simplified process framework and its focus on teamwork. The objective of Scrum is to deliver working software and demonstrate it to the customer faster and more frequent during the software development project. However the security requirements for the developing information systems have often a low priority. This requirements prioritization issue results in the situations where the solution meets all the business requirements but it is vulnerable to potential security threats. The major benefit of the Scrum framework is the iterative development approach and the opportunity to automate penetration tests. Therefore the security vulnerabilities can be discovered and solved more often which will positively contribute to the overall information system protection against potential hackers. In this research paper the authors propose how the agile software development framework Scrum can be enriched by considering the penetration tests and related security requirements during the software development lifecycle. Authors apply in this paper the knowledge and expertise from their previous work focused on development of the new information system penetration tests methodology PETA with focus on using COBIT 4.1 as the framework for management of these tests, and on previous work focused on tailoring the project management framework PRINCE2 with Scrum. The outcomes of this paper can be used primarily by the security managers, users, developers and auditors. The security managers may benefit from the iterative software development approach and penetration tests automation. The developers and users will better understand the importance of the penetration tests and they will learn how to effectively embed the tests into the agile development lifecycle. Last but not least the auditors may use the outcomes of this paper as recommendations for companies struggling with penetrations testing embedded in the agile software development process.