Abstract
In the past decades, a significant increase has been observed in cyberattacks on the web-based systems used for financial purposes. Such individual systems often contain security weaknesses, called vulnerabilities that can be exploited for malicious purposes. The exploitation of such vulnerabilities can result in disclosure and manipulation of sensitive data as well as have destructive effects. To protect such systems, security testing is required on a periodic basis. Various detection and assessment techniques have been suggested by developers and researchers to address these security issues. In this paper, we survey the contributions of academia in the field of security testing for software applications and communication systems. A comprehensive review and in-depth analysis of the existing literature testing approaches has been performed to analyze their effectiveness and applicability under various scenarios. Further, we discuss various techniques used for conducting various security assessments. We follow the widely used method by Kitchenham and Charters for conducting a comprehensive systematic literature review process. Also, we propose a taxonomy for security testing techniques consisting of three main categories (Identification, Testing, and Reporting) and 17 subcategories consisting of specific security testing techniques (e.g., Black-box testing, risk assessment). Further, we assign a distinctive category from our taxonomy to each published paper in the security testing area, based on the material presented/discussed in the paper.