Compliance Profiles for Automated Testing Across Computing Environments
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Solution Overview
Problem
The increasing complexity of service-oriented architectures, virtualization technologies, and online execution environments in computing environments leads to challenges in ensuring compliance with regulatory, industry, or company standards, as different groups use varying terminology and rules, and solutions for compliance testing have not been fully developed.
Innovation Solution
A Compliance Enforcement Tool (CET) system that utilizes compliance profiles, including predefined and user-defined tests, to automate compliance testing across various computing environments, allowing for flexible and reusable testing throughout the software lifecycle.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If service-oriented architectures and virtualization technologies are used to increase computing environment functionality, then system capability and versatility are improved, but compliance testing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The compliance testing system is segmented into modular components: a compliance engine that executes tests, a profile manager that stores compliance profiles, and a test generator that creates test cases. This segmentation allows the system to handle complex computing environments by breaking down compliance testing into manageable, reusable units that can be independently configured and executed.
Solution Approach 2:
The compliance testing system is designed with universal functionality to test multiple compliance standards (regulatory, industry, organizational) across diverse computing environments (cloud, on-premise, virtualized). The system uses a unified architecture that can adapt to different service-oriented architectures and virtualization technologies through configurable compliance profiles, eliminating the need for separate testing solutions for each environment.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple compliance standards and terminology are supported to address different groups' requirements, then compliance coverage is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system manages compliance standards by changing parameters within a unified testing framework. Instead of maintaining separate testing systems for different compliance requirements, the system uses configurable compliance profiles that define different sets of controls and test parameters. These profiles can be loaded and executed against the same computing environment, allowing the system to adapt to different compliance standards by modifying test parameters rather than changing the core system architecture.
3Measurement precision
If manual compliance testing procedures are used to ensure accuracy, then testing precision is improved, but productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The compliance testing system performs self-service by automatically executing compliance tests against computing environments without requiring manual intervention for each test case. The system uses predefined compliance profiles that contain all necessary test configurations, and the compliance engine automatically generates test cases, executes them, and analyzes results. This automation maintains testing precision through systematic, repeatable test execution while dramatically improving productivity by eliminating manual testing procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates feedback mechanisms where test results are automatically analyzed and reported, and compliance violations are identified and communicated to users. The feedback loop includes automatic generation of compliance reports, tracking of remediation status, and continuous monitoring to ensure ongoing compliance. This feedback-driven approach maintains high testing precision through systematic result analysis while improving productivity by providing immediate, actionable insights without requiring manual review of each test case.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are described for managing creation and/or implementation of compliance-based procedures and policies for computing environments executing software programs using computing resources. In at least some situations, the described techniques include performing one or more defined compliance tests on a target computing environment by employing user-defined and/or predefined compliance profiles to test one or more computing resources in the target computing environment. Profiles typically include one or more user-defined or predefined controls that each includes one or more compliance tests, which in turn utilize one or more user-defined or predefined testing-implementation modules to execute the tests. Profiles can introduce dependencies so that one profile can access and utilize the controls or testing-implementation modules in other profiles. A user can dynamically execute a profile, and/or profiles can be scheduled for execution (e.g., so that multiple target computing environments can be tested simultaneously or at different times).