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    How to Create an Assessment

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    Secure Code Warrior Elves
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    After running a Secure Code Warrior® tournament, or using other code analysis and review tools, the results will show you the gaps in security awareness within your development or application teams.

    This is good to know before creating an assessment as you generally want to address the top few weaknesses with tailored training and assessment challenges.

    Assessments are also a great way to benchmark secure coding skills and build certification levels for graduates, contractors, new recruits, and internal developers.

    This article details how to create an Assessment. You can also watch the video below to see how to do this. 

     

    Note: Only Company Administrators and Team Managers can create Assessments.

     

    Step 1 

     Click the Guided Learning from the top menu then click Assessments

     

    Create Assessment - E - 1.png

    Note: For first-time assessment creation, you’ll be taken through a guided tour.
    To begin the tour, click Start Now when the prompt shows up. 

    If there's already a list of assessments on this page, click the 'Create Assessment' button to start creating a new one.

     

    Create Assessment - E - 2 .png


    Step 2 

    Configure your assessment by giving it a name, description, and setting an applicable programming language/framework.

     

    Tip: To easily manage and report on your assessment, it's recommended to decide on a naming convention that includes dates, objectives, goals, or programs.

     

    Create Assessment - E - 2.png

    Name

    Give the assessment a name. Ideally, something that’s easy to keep track of or relevant to a particular time of year since you’ll likely be creating a few of these as time goes on. 

    Description
    Now write a short description to let your developers know what the assessment is about and what it’ll cover. Think of this part more like a brief introduction. 


    Step 3

    Click Advanced Options to configure the assessment to suit your security program objectives

    Advanced_Options.png

    • Scheduling Options - Set completion date and time limit. 
      - For the first assessment after a kick-off tournament, we recommend leaving it open for 3 months. This gives developers time to complete it and also gives you a skill baseline to start working with
    • Invitation Options - Choose when invites are sent, if developers can start assessments by themselves, or if they will be allowed to retry an assessment
    • Challenge Options - Choose to have a fixed number of challenges, toggle assessment guide for new SCW users
    • Pass/Fail Options - Set a minimum passing score.
    • LMS Integration - Toggle on to enable a SCORM package download that can be imported into your LMS
    Note: Just beneath the Pass/Fail field, you'll notice a little checkbox that says "Emit a PDF certificate on success". Clicking this box will generate a certificate of completion for the participating developer when they pass the assessment. For more details about creating certificates, check out this article.

     

    Step 4 

    Next, select the language/frameworks this assessment will cover.

    Tip: As each language/framework may be more or less susceptible to certain vulnerabilities, it's recommended to select only those languages required to maximize the possible challenge and vulnerability options.

     

    Create Assessment - E - 4 .png

    All languages in Secure Code Warrior are "OWASP ready." Whenever we release new languages and challenges there’s a template to go with it. However, because each language is unique, they’ll all have different OWASP related materials, so templates may not be available. 

    As long as you remain aware of who assessments are going to, you should be fine. For example, you wouldn’t put JavaScript and Python devs in the same assessment because the templates will differ due to those two languages being front and back end, respectively.

     

    Step 5

    With the desired programming languages/ frameworks, applicable assessment templates will be listed.

    Choose from a pre-built Assessment template or build your own by selecting the vulnerability category, sub-category, and difficulty level. You'll still have the option to change things like challenge difficulty and categories.

    Here's what a language with a template would look like.

    prebuilt_template.png

    Two Important Notes:
    • Depending on the languages chosen for your assessment, there may or may not be a template available.
    • The number of challenges available when mixing application types may be reduced.


    Create Your Own

    Go ahead and click the + Add a Challenge button to start configuring the assessment’s structure

    Add_Challenges.png

    Tip: We recommend a minimum of 10 challenges to start with as this should take just under an hour to complete. With different challenge difficulty settings, the time it takes to complete an assessment can be bumped to over an hour. 


    Step 6

    When you’re done, click the Save button to publish the assessment.



    Create Assessment - E - 6.png

     

    Next Steps

    Invite developers to complete an assessment

    Complete an Assessment

    How to Create or Modify an Assessment Certificate

     

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