How to Address the Challenges of IoT Testing
Tags: iottesting, iotsecurity, industrialiot
Published: 2020-02-24 11:42:50

While designing and expanding new products, specifically electronics, there is a huge obstacle that needs to be overcome along the way. A Blackberry survey supervised during CES 2019 disclosed that 80 % of consumers don’t believe in their IoT devices to keep their data safe. That survey only deals with the data gathered, processed and transferred by IoT devices—it doesn’t even touch on their abilities or additional core issues. 

The IoT market is assumed to double by 2021, accumulating $520 billion in revenue. It’s explicitly clear at this point that the challenges and risks of IoT development must be considered carefully. Every year, the industry spends millions on the repeal of defective devices that often result from digital bugs. In fact, between 2018 and 2022, the IoT industry is settling to expend $10 billion to recall defective devices produced by software bugs. 

To avoid such losses as well as damage to brand image, it is extremely necessary to execute quality assurance (QA) testing before any IoT is initiated. However, there are a number of challenges that make IoT’s testing tough. Below, we illustrate how to address a few major challenges of IoT Testing.
   
IoT security threats and privacy concerns on the rise

One of the largest flaws with modern “smart” devices and IoT hardware is how unsafe they are in terms of digital security and data privacy. Without exact protection, hackers can easily take full control, stream or inhale data, or even change various processes. It’s crucial that devices are tested in a proper manner and locked down before they ever ship out to store shelves or customers. Security must be a priority well after a product launch and should be retested after every new software or firmware update. 

Get control on Connectivity

Most of the IoT devices need active wireless or wired internet connectivity. In a few cases, when that’s not available then such devices often become useless. This reveals two separate requirements: the first is the requirement of an active connection and the second one is offline functionality.
For starters, both the hardware and software have to be optimized to empower for a constant connection and all processes that are included with that. Careful testing must be done to assure that the effect of a dropped connection—irregular or not—is least.
 
IoT device diversity 

The reality is that the types of IoT devices and applications are so different that they demand strong test abilities. Performance must be reliably high across all devices and goes beyond user expectations.

Testers must have a powerful test strategy and have a good interpretation of the architecture and also ensure that the devices and software under test are always outlined with the exact version. If the testing system relies completely on third-party services, tests may fail if that third-party service changes. Automated tests that run as part of a constant testing pipeline will recognize this rapidly.

If the service is down, you can still test with the help of the virtualized service. A customizable service virtualization tool will allow you to design the assumed responses from the service so that you can test your application’s response to different situations.

Too many IoT platforms

Every IoT device has its own hardware and depends on software to operate it. Application software will also combine with IoT devices, giving commands to the device and monitoring data collected by the device.

As there are so many variations of software and hardware for devices and various versions of firmware and operating systems, it might not be feasible to test all possible combinations of hardware and software. To define a suitable subset that can be tested virtually, collect information from your end-users to interpret which devices and software versions they’re using and monitor it to discover the most popular combinations.

Once you understand which devices and operating systems to test, you can concentrate most of your testing part on these combinations and run smaller practicality tests on less common combinations.

Rapid-moving data and increased load take a charge

Connected IoT devices depend on fast communication. Thus, network status can have a remarkable effect on device performance. Smart devices often encounter problems with network infrastructure, such as overloaded WiFi channels, inaccurate network hardware and slow or inconsistent Internet connections. 

IoT devices and applications must be tested across these various conditions to assure that they respond accurately without losing data. 

For instance, an IoT device that has a memory leak will execute slowly and may not acknowledge correctly. Software on desktop or laptop computers is operated and tested with the help of the user clicking or typing. But IoT devices are often passive, so testers must interpret what devices are being utilized and know how they act. This needs an altered look at performance testing tools and performance analyzing.

IoT testing may be a little bit tough or challenging but, it is also very exciting as well for the testing team to verify such a complicated mesh of protocols, devices, hardware, operation systems, firmware, etc.

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