In this chapter, we discussed the objective of security automation: to reduce repeated manual testing and increase testing coverage in an efficient manner. The OWASP Top 10 list for web application security issues and the CWE Top 25 list for secure coding issues were suggested as resources.
We also discussed some misunderstandings of security automation, such as the need for highly skilled penetration testers, the time it takes to build automation frameworks, and the perceived limitations of automation testing's effectiveness. Security automation testing can even identify serious security defects, and won't require lots of implementation efforts, so long as the right security tools and automation frameworks are integrated properly.
Last but not least, we also discussed the skills of security developers and automation testing developers. The common ground required between these two roles includes only knowledge of networking, HTTP/HTTPS protocols, an operating system, and at least one programming language. The automation test developer may focus more on automation testing frameworks such as BDD, DDT, Selenium, unit testing, and so on. On the other hand, the security tester may focus on using security tools and techniques to identify security issues. In the coming chapters, we will demonstrate how security and automation can integrate properly to identify security issues in a more effective manner.