May 13, 2010

Thanks for breaking it!


People hire us to break stuff (and lately we're pretty good at it). Well not just, but breaking is part of testing, as is validating You'd think folks wouldn't want to hire us for that, and a lot of times you'd be right. But, this week, we had a large networking vendor in the lab testing their product. On day 2 we discovered a significant vulnerability that we were able to exploit. We replicated it before their eyes. What did the vendor do? He gave our lead engineer a high five!

Why? because, after having visited several labs with this same product, we were the first to find something and not simply give it the 'rubber stamp.' This is why you test. Not just to validate features, but so you can find out what you still need to do to improve it. Good product developers like this one "get it." He just got tremendous value out of the engagement, and has already put in proposals on the spot for additional testing with us. And maybe his competitors have similar issues (which is often the case), so now this vendor is ahead of the game and will likely have it fixed very shortly.

IT Buyers: This is the attitude you want to see in your vendors.