Thursday 25 August 2022

Vital Role of Security Testing in Healthcare Applications

 

Vital Role of Security Testing in Healthcare Applications

Content source: https://www.ifourtechnolab.com/blog/vital-role-of-security-testing-in-healthcare-applications

We are currently living through a deadly pandemic, and the need to improve healthcare technology and applications has increased more than ever. The public healthcare sector has huge responsibilities on its hands, and the pandemic has highlighted its inability to meet those responsibilities.

Given this failure, research and development are underway to create new and improved healthcare methods throughout the world. Healthcare applications are just one facet of these innovations. Although healthcare Apps existed before the pandemic, they have become more mainstream since then.

These applications are being used for many purposes, most notably to monitor patients in real-time, online consultations, and tomanage patient's data and store all the necessary information.

Although these applications have proved instrumental in helping people gain access to medical health services during the pandemic, they also come with risks. Cybersecurity is the most challenging. Most healthcare applications store patient's information, sensitive data, account details, payment information, and all health records, so security testing is a must


Stethoscope

Here's how it can be beneficial in different ways to avoid any mishaps;

Validating Information Storage

Data storage and protection are the most vital thing for healthcare apps and software because their users trust the organizations to keep all their personal information secure.

People are reluctant to upload their information on an online platform such as healthcare applications because they don't want to be victims of cyber-attacks or identity theft. Security testing is the first step after launching an application to be used in the world.

You take a car out for a test drive before you invest in it; security testing is pretty much the same to eliminate any potential leakage of data or decryption attempts. Security testing will put Protected Health Information (PHI) out in the open to ensure the stored data stays safe from any breach.

Protecting Transmission of Information

Healthcare applications are designed to manage and transfer data through different platforms and organizations like email, iCloud, mobile phones, etc. It's important to transmit all your data is wellencrypted and protected from any unauthorized access from a third-party amidst the exchange of information.

There are many apps that ask for permission to access your data and information, and even apps for small businesses are not safe from this, so it's important to make sure all there is no breach of information.

Security testing allows you to safeguard every bit of information and acts as a shield to ensure the safe and sound transfer of data.

Validating Identity of Patients

Most cybercriminals and hackers find security loopholes in different software and result in a data breach and identity theft. Security testing is done to ensure no vulnerable points can be manipulated to gain access to your personal information.

Having a strong identity detection system and validating every access made is important to reduce any chances of a security blunder.

Analysing and Assessing All the Risks

Security testing involves trial and error before officially launching any healthcare application. Risk assessment is a huge part of it to make sure your release goes smoothly. Often there are vulnerabilities found among the code, and security testing gives your team a chance to diagnose and fix every problem.

Analyzing all your weak points and recognizing shortcomings helps strengthen an application a lot by preparing the system for future risks and threats. Ensure PHI doesn't show up in URLs, and there are proper procedures to access every safe control. Diagnosing every potential risk before it shows up in the application's usage will help you achieve better software.

Improving Security Techniques

The one thing that has improved with all the innovations is that there are better security techniques and protections. For example, most apps offer face and touch ID recognition to ensure only the user has access to the information they have stored.

Healthcare applications need specific and better security techniques to stay away from scammers and cyber attackers. Most critical care or senior citizens tend to fall for different traps set online. They are at risk of information leakage, so there need to be different security techniques like two-way authentication and special algorithms.

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Improving Code Quality

Every new version of the software has improved code and quality and fixed all the previous bugs found. A safer software application is always preferred in the healthcare domain instead of an innovative one as it's made to store sensitive patient information and health records.

It's important to receive feedback from your users and identify different bugs found in your application to make sure you improve the quality of your software and have an improved high-quality product in the market for use.

Security Testing is often done to search out all the bugs in the initial stages and versions of your application, so it saves extra costs of releasing new versions of the app later on.

Building Trust

There are many different apps offering various products and services in the healthcare field and a whole range of competitors. The most important thing is to gain your users' trust and confidence, as this is the right way to grow your business.

Proper Security Testing and a safe platform will help you earn the stamp of approval and build trust among the users that their information is safe in your hands and help your business in the long run by gaining investors' confidence.

Healthcare Applications Require Security Testing to Keep Cybercriminalsat Bay

As explained above, security testing is vital in the release and launch of any software for public use and especially important in the healthcare domain. Security testing is a safe investment in the long run for both your business, potential investors, and users.

You can use various security techniques to evaluate and assess any security loopholes before the attackers do this job for you. It saves you from a lot of problems that might come your way and helps you meet all industry and healthcare regulations.

Wednesday 17 August 2022

ASP.NET SignalR for real time applications

 

ASP.NET SignalR for real time applications | iFour Technolab

Content source: https://www.ifourtechnolab.com/blog/asp-net-signalr-for-real-time-applications

Introduction

SignalR is a new library for ASP.Net Development companies that is used to add real time web functionality to ASP.NET applications . Real Time functionality is the ability to have put your server side code content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available, rather than having the server wait for a client to request a new data.

SignalR provides a bidirectional communication channel between (web) clients and a server side (web) application. SignalR is not limited to web application. A client can be every application or web page which uses JavaScript or .NET Framework 4.5 (or 4 with some restrictions) - like Windows Phone apps, SilverLight or Console applications. A SignalR server application has to be build with .NET Framework 4.5 (or 4 with some restrictions).

 
Real Time Web Approach

SignalR provides two communication levels:

  • Persistent Connection API - low level, message-oriented communication
  • Hub API - high level, allows direct call of client and server methods

The Hub API offers the most convenient and preferred communication API. The Persistent Connection API might only be interesting, if you need to integrate with an existing message based server application or if you need for some reason detailed control on the message level.

How it is different?

SignalR is the latest library in ASP.Net, the 'real-time' framework that allows the server to execute methods on the client. We are not limited to this interaction, and we can expose server-side methods to our clients. This potentially allows for a much cleaner interaction between client and server, as all data is passed through arguments or the result of a method call. SignalR clients are available for a variety of platforms, and a client-side is generated for all of the server-side methods that are exposed to the clients.

Analysis of ASP.NET SignalR

Advantages

  • Not restricted to web clients

  • Selection of the best available communication mechanism automatically

  • Binding complex objects (JSON)

  • Open-source solution available on GitHub that can be installed via NuGet.

  • Bidirectional communication for (web) clients.

  • Easy to setup.

  • Install by issuing NuGet command: “install-package Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR“.

  • SignalR can run inside a web application or self-hosted.

  • Easy to debug. It can run in IIS Express. All the powers of Visual Studio just wait to be utilized.”

  • Very good documentation and tutorials

Disadvantages

  • Not a reliable communication

  • ASP.Net Development companies should not use it if a guaranteed delivery of messages is mandate. Bank Transaction are a negative example.

  • It uses dynamics. Some syntactical errors can only be detected at runtime. However, only a few lines of code are affected. So, it’s not a real problem detected all errors related to the usage of dynamics.

  • At times, it’s difficult to attach a debugger to the running process, especially, under heavy load.

  • Allows only 10 connections when running in IIS in desktop systems.

  • Web clients and the server use different technologies so there is not much code reuse between them.

Simple Chat Application with MVC

install-package Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR

Asp.Net Signalr for Real Time Apps


 

 


 

 

 
  • In Visual Studio, create new project with C# ASP.NET Web Application and click ok.

  •  
  • In the New ASP.NET Project window, select MVC, and click Change Authentication.

  •  
  • SelectNo Authentication in the Change Authentication window, and click OK.

  •  
  • Click OK in the New ASP.NET Project

  • Open theTools | Library Package Manager | Package Manager Console and run the following command. This step adds to the project a set of script files and assembly references that enable SignalR functionality.

  •  
  • In Solution Explorer, expand the Scripts folder. Note that script libraries for SignalR have been added to the project.

  •  
  • In Solution Explorer, right-click the project, select Add | New Folder, and add a new folder named Hubs.

  • Right-click theHubs folder, click Add | New Item, select the Visual C# | Web | SignalR node in the Installed pane, select SignalR Hub Class (v2) from the center pane, and create a new hub named cs. You will use this class as a SignalR server hub that sends messages to all clients.

  •  
  • Replace the code in the MessageHub class with the following code.

  •  
  • Create a new OwinStartup class called Startup.cs and press Add.

  •  
  • Change the contents of the Startup.cs file to the following.

  •  
  • Edit theHomeController class found in Controllers/HomeController.cs and add the following method to the class. This method returns the Chat view that you will create in a later step.

  •  
  • Right-click the Views/Home folder, and select Add | View.

  •  
  • Replace the contents ofcshtml with the following code.

  •  
  • Save All for the project.

Run the SignalRDemo


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  • Press F5 to run the project in debug mode.

  • In the browser address line, append/home/chat to the URL of the default page for the project. The Chat page loads in a browser instance and prompts for a user name.

  •  
  • Enter a name.

  • Copy the URL from the address bar of the browser and use it to open two more browser instances. In each browser instance, enter a unique user name.

  • In each browser instance, add a comment and click Send. The comments should display in all browser instances

  • he following screen shot shows the chat application running in a browser.

  •  
     
  • Type message and press sent and check with two different browser instance.

  •  

Conclusion

SignalR identifies the process of building real-time applications. It includes an ASP.NET Site server library and a JavaScript client library to make it easier to manage client-server connections and push content updates to clients from SignalR Hub. You can add the SignalR library to an existing ASP.NET application to gain real-time functionality.

It also enables completely new types of applications that require high frequency updates from the server, e.g. chat application, real-time gaming, Application Monitoring, etc.

Wednesday 3 August 2022

Office add-in development: VSTO Add-ins vs JavaScript API

 

Office add-in development: VSTO Add-ins vs JavaScript API

Content source: https://www.ifourtechnolab.com/blog/office-add-in-development-vsto-add-ins-vs-javascript-api

Microsoft office Microsoft office is one of the most successful and pioneer softwares that enabled and accelerated digital revolution. Office Add-ins Office Add-ins are used for functionality extension and alteration of office clients like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Office 365. Microsoft supports creation of new features and modification of existing features using available APIs and Tools to VSTO software development companies in USA.

Office Add-ins types

  • Functionality extension in Excel, PowerPoint and Word
  • New object creation in PowerPoint and Excel
  • Functionality extension in Outlook add-ins

Office add-in development technologies

  • Develop add-in using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)
  • Develop add-in using Office JavaScript API

Office JavaScript API Add-in

Office JavaScript API Add-in is used to develop office add-in for functionality extension in office clients like Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook using traditional web technologies like JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Following architecture depicts how JavaScript API Add-in works.

Office JavaScript API Add-in

Benefits of Office JavaScript Add-in technology

  • Add-in created using this technology is highly portable across different platforms like Windows, iOS, Mobile Phones and Tablets.
  • Hosting and distribution of Add-ins developed using JavaScript API is easy using office store. Office store manages complete licensing process and cycle.
  • Online service hosting is easy in JavaScript Add-in.
  • Easy support to bring data from external sources or third party apps.
  • Supports highly interactive UI using CSS and JavaScript
  • Interactive visualization using Charts, Maps and ClipArt to its own excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

Challenges of Office JavaScript Add-in technology

  • This technology is new and introduced with office 2016 and thus has very limited support available.
  • It offers very limited APIs and functions and thus not suitable to every requirements.
  • All APIs are not supported by all platforms currently. One needs consider the platform while using few APIs in add-in development.
  • This technology is still in development. You may find some issue during development should Microsoft changes any API or support.

    Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Add-in

    VSTO is a set of development tools that is available in the form of add-in or extension (project templates) and it allows Office 2013 and later versions of Office applications to host the add-in and to expose their functionality via .NET framework.

     
    VSTO Add-in Development

    This allows extensions to the Office applications to be written in programming languages as well as to use functionality and user interface constructs from Office applications in .NET applications.

    Benefits of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Add-in

    • It provides access to complete office object model. So one can nearly perform any operation on office client.
    • Any feature of office client is feasible to improvised or modified.
    • Local machine integration like file systems and other applications are comparatively easy.
    • Good support from Microsoft and other sources available
    • C# or any other CLI programming language can be used to create new office add-in.

    Challenges of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Add-in

    • VSTO add-ins are not portable as JavaScript Add-ins. These require installation files that can only be used in Windows.
    • Distribution and licensing process need to be handled separately.
    • Integration with third party services using data from different sources is confined to its Microsoft support and compatibility.

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    Conclusion

    We discussed how add-in allows extending office applications per our requirements. Some of the factors that determine the use of technology VSTO vs JavaScript API are the following.


    • - Purpose and objective of Add-in
    • - Data and data source for add-in
    • - Host support for add-in
    • - Functionalities of add-in

    If the requirement for host support is wide, like Windows, OS X, iOS, iPad then it is recommended to use JavaScript API as underlining technology. It is very easy to use and integrate. It also provides easy integration with online services. It can be hosted in office store and also can be distributed very easily. JavaScript API add-in is portable on multiple devices like Tablets, Mobile phones etc.

    If the add-in requirement is to use native office functionalities or working with file system, then it is recommend to use Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) as underlining technology for add-in implementation. Timely and useful support is available to VSTO development companies in USA from Microsoft and other sources compared to Office JavaScript API. Complete office object model can be accessible using VSTO. Local machine integrations can be done very easily. It is available on Windows since office 2003 so support is also easily available.




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