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The proliferation of the internet of things and its associated endpoints have expanded organizations’ surface of attack. Therefore, the best IoT testing tools ensure IoT devices are secure by allowing QA teams to validate their performance, check their functionality, and scan them for vulnerabilities.

This article sheds light on the end-to-end functionality and feature-rich resources and that the best IoT testing tools offer QA teams and InfoSec analysts to keep hackers at bay while optimizing product quality. 

Comparison Criteria

What do I look for when I select the best IoT testing tools? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria: 

  1. User Interface (UI): I look for an attractive yet sparse UI because IoT testing involves juggling several moving parts and devices. So, extra care should be taken not to overwhelm the user with irrelevant details.
  2. Usability: In this case, I look for user-friendliness and relative ease in accomplishing tasks since these tend to have an outsized influence on user experience.
  3. Integrations: No application is wholly self-sufficient, no matter how good it is. Hence, integrations are necessary to allow them play nice with other software tools and plug into other domain expertise.
  4. Value for $: I look for cost-effectiveness and affordability relative to the depth and breadth of functionality offered by the IoT tool.

IoT Security Testing Key Features

  • Network and connectivity scanning: Because IoT devices are able to transmit data wirelessly, one of its centerpieces is traffic monitoring technologies that scan, detect, and scrutinize network packets. Moreover, the strength of connectivity has to be evaluated once established to ensure data packets are adequately delivered.
  • Automated security testing: In addition to testing whether the data being transmitted is encrypted, IoT testing tools have to evaluate how effective the solution is with regard to verifying threats, risks, and vulnerabilities. The best IoT testing tools optimize these activities with automation testing features that perform a range of activities like searching for weaknesses, examining compatibility across platforms, and so on.
  • Interoperability: This ensures IoT testing cooperates with other complementary tools and provides a uniform, quality end-user experience when integrated across different platforms.
  • Scalability: IoT ecosystems tend to be vast and increase rapidly. So, testing tools need to have the capacity to handle large volumes of endpoints along with the ability to scale their testing scope as device workload rises. 

Overviews Of The 15 Best IoT Testing Tools

Here’s a brief description of each of the IoT testing tools to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the interface.

1

Datadog

Real-Time Observability of Entire Infrastructure Stack Metrics in One Place.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.3
273 reviews

14-day free trial

From $15/user/month (billed annually)

Datadog is a cloud-based infrastructure monitoring tool that assists IT administrators maintain the overall health of their networks, extending beyond cloud service models to incorporate serverless ecosystems. 

Datadog is feature-rich to supports any service stack or application layer, whether its monitoring the health of the CI pipeline or maintaining regulatory compliance transparency through audits across pipelines. It facilitates cloud migration and digital transformation with tools that enable collaboration among business, operations, and development teams. 

Datadog provides security, network, database, and synthetic monitoring in addition to log management and optimizing application performance. With real user monitoring, Datadog allows teams to monitor user journeys, especially frontend performance in one place. This provides an integrated view of running services and IT programs across a network, including a comprehensive view of serverless applications. 

Datadog provides an abundance of features for robust application management. encompasses the ability to trace requests across distributed systems, and track and understand user behavior. You can schedule automated report generation and real-time alerts to fortify your system against digital threats. 

When it comes to dashboards, Datadog offers administrators with two choices. It allows teams to quickly assemble a customized monitoring dashboard to accommodate any specialized need. Alternatively, they can choose the prefabricated dashboards that come with Datadog. 

Datadog supports as many as 350 integrations with its variety of API services covering key network protocols such as SSH (Secure Shell), SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). 

In addition to a 14-day free trial, Datadog offers three pricing tiers: Free, Pro ($15 per host/month), and Enterprise ($23 per host/month).

2

Appknox

Platform focused entirely on Mobile Application Security

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4
42 reviews

Pricing upon request

Appknox is an automated testing suite that provides on-demand mobile application security to enable businesses to detect and remediate vulnerabilities. AppKnox applies DevSecOps throughout the CI/CD lifecycle by scanning mobile apps during their development phase, during deployment and delivery, and even after publishing in app stores. 

In so doing, it reduces the friction of adoption, complexity, manpower costs, and delivery timelines. Moreover, AppKnox offers a flexible engagement model that provides businesses with several deployment models and approaches to their security requirements. Its strategy is to use a smart system approach combined with expert human resources. From manual application testing, vulnerability assessment tools, issue tracking, and remediation calls. 

With its vast API capabilities, AppKnox makes it easy to integrate into the application development cycle, providing a worthy API testing partner, whether it is for securing apps by STAST, DAST, or the server-side of things. This integration typically involves logic, data, and other relevant objects with other software applications. 

AppKnox has three tiers, namely Essential, Professional, and Enterprise. Essential provides a one-time vulnerability assessment and targets organizations just getting started with mobile application security. On the other hand, Professional is ideal for businesses who seek unlimited vulnerability assessments and multiple updates on the same app while Enterprise is for banks and enterprises with mission-critical security needs. 

AppKnox prices are available on quote. 

3

Mobot

Automated testing for IoT devices using real-life robots that click, flip, and swipe

30-day free trial

$1,500/month/action (tap, swipe, click, etc.)

Mobot is a SaaS product that's designed to help QA teams with IoT testing by giving the responsibility over to mechanical robots. Once you upload and customize your test to Mobot's self-serve test plan tool, a robot will perform the test and generate a report that your team can use to improve your product.

Cross-platform testing enables organizations to automate tests for applications across different operating systems, devices, and browsers. This ensures consistent testing coverage and helps identify platform-specific issues and compatibility problems. Mobot is particularly adept at testing mobile applications on both iOS and Android devices. It offers comprehensive support for different device models, operating system versions, and screen sizes, ensuring thorough testing across the mobile ecosystem.

Mobot stands out for its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, making it exceptionally adept at automating complex and dynamic test scenarios. Unlike many traditional QA testing tools that rely on static scripts, Mobot leverages machine learning algorithms to adapt and evolve its test scripts based on the application's behavior. This unique feature allows Mobot to perform exploratory testing by learning from previous test runs and identifying potential areas of concern or instability.

Testers can also automate user interactions such as clicking buttons, entering text, and verifying expected outputs using Mobot's automation solutions. This helps ensure that the application's UI is responsive and functions as intended. Mobot's test automation solutions serve many purposes, including cross-platform testing and UI and functional testing.

Mobot provides detailed reports and analysis of test results across all tested platforms. Testers can easily identify discrepancies, bugs, and performance issues specific to particular platforms, making it easier to prioritize and address cross-platform concerns.

Mobot integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jenkins, GitHub, Jira, Trello, Bugzilla, TestRail, Zephyr, and Microsoft Azure.

Mobot pricing starts at $1,500/month/action. Further pricing information is available upon request. A 30-day free trial is also available.

4

Bevywise IoT Simulator

Intelligent IoT simulation tool for testing and building IoT/MQTT applications

Pricing upon request

As the Internet of Things has grown in popularity, the BevyWise IoT simulator is increasingly sought to test IoT applications and the messaging communication protocol (MQTT) that it relies on. 

BevyWise allows engineers to test IoT applications with or without physical devices. They can either create templates effectively that act as placeholders for physical devices or simulate thousands of unique virtual devices in a matter of minutes. 

BevyWise IoT simulator has four pricing tiers, which are differentiated by features supported and the number of clients permitted. However, they are standard pricing packages, which means you only pay once but use it in perpetuity.

Stream allows 1,000 clients and costs $599. River allows 5,000 clients and costs $1,799. Sea allows 10,000 clients and costs $2,999. Ocean allows unlimited clients but you need to contact sales for a price quotation.

5

MATLAB

Design, deploy, and prototype IoT applications while providing thousands of functions

Pricing available upon request

MATLAB, in conjunction with Simulink, provides a one-two punch that enables developers to build data-driven models while comparing the simulated results with actual system responses. MATLAB programs or Simulink models are versatile as they can be automatically deployed to different environments, whether it is the cloud, edge, or asset. 

It allows you to develop algorithms and design IoT analytics with the support of prebuilt functions ranging from machine learning, computer vision, deep learning, optimizations, data cleaning, and much more. With MATLAB + Simulink, you can automatically generate GPU, C/C++, or Verilog/VHDL code for embedded devices. On the other hand, it allows you to generate runtime executables for cloud, desktop, or server applications.

6

CloudTest

Scalable load testing to predict unforeseen spikes in user activity

Pricing upon request

CloudTest enables organizations to prepare their environments for anticipated or predicted spikes in application loads. CloudTest helps you to gauge whether your system can adequately respond to unforeseen or sudden spikes in user activity. 

It provides real-time application load and performance testing to help ensure your infrastructure has a dispersed workload. CloudTest also gives real-time feedback that makes it possible to quickly identify problems with better accuracy. In so doing, organizations are able to plan for events such as campaign promotions and holiday sales by subsequently bulletproofing their online infrastructure. 

CloudTest is user-friendly, without any coding required to set variables, parameters, or validations. In addition, it also allows you to reuse and combine tests. Apart from performance testing, CloudTest can be integrated into the software development lifecycle, by allowing QA testers to automate CI/CD operation checks, and operations staff to evaluate performance at scale while empowering developers to test API services. 

CloudTest integrates with CI/CD pipelines, along with offering the choice of either a fully managed service or a self-service solution. 

Pricing for CloudTest is available upon request. 

7

IBM Watson IoT Platform (IBM Bluemix)

Offers Real-Time IoT Monitoring

IBM Watson IoT Platform (IBM Bluemix) is a fully-managed, cloud-hosted platform that enables businesses to take advantage of data analytics to extract value from sensors and connected devices. Ultimately, the IBM Watson IoT Platform helps you effectively manage these IoT devices so your apps can benefit from their live and historical data using REST and real-time APIs.

IBM Watson IoT Platform (IBM Bluemix) empowers organizations to generate insights with visualization dashboards, and even create business models from the operation of billions of connected devices and endpoints. It provides a huge range of possibilities for analytic apps as diverse as weather data, blockchain capabilities, and Watson cognitive APIs that provide improved user experience with image recognition and natural voice interfaces. 

It provides many tools and starting points to do so, allowing organizations to connect their device gateways to an IBM Cloud recipe using lightweight MQTTP or HTTP protocols. Its AI-driven analytics allows organizations to start small yet scale fast by processing IoT data quickly. 

IBM Watson IoT Platform also comprises features that allow organizations to rethink their business strategy with IoT, like data management tools that facilitate enterprise asset management, gain greater control of complex environments, and streamline business operations across silos. 

Watson IoT Platform service plans are convoluted and depend on a multitude of factors like data-transfer limits, usage-based billing, cloud-to-device-sends, and many more esoteric factors. It also has metrics like Data Exchanged, Data Analyzed, and Edge Data Analyzed that have tiered priced modeling depending on how their volume increases. 

8

Sensu

Framework for Building Event Pipelines with Comprehensive, Scalable Monitoring Tools

14 Days Free Trial

From $5/node/month

Sensu is a SaaS, cloud-based service that allows you to future-proof your cloud infrastructure with performance monitoring at scale. In addition, Sensu enables you to build event pipelines to automate workflows tailored to the needs of different processes in the business.

These monitoring solutions aim to provide enterprises with in-depth observability across protocols and systems, ranging from bare metal to Kubernetes orchestrations. Hence, it allows the automation of registration and deregistration of connected devices, servers, containers apps, and services. This visibility is primarily achieved through Sensu’s ability to eliminate data siloes. 

Sensu is important in an age of dynamic infrastructures and provides automatic diagnoses and self-healing features to address this reality. Sensu also offers metrics, tracing, and logging features to address the gaps in observability due to our current dynamic infrastructures. 

To make monitoring easier, Sensu has declarative configuration files to facilitate the codification of monitoring workflows. Moreover, these files can be treated as code repositories, for example, they can be versioned, shared, and viewed by team members. 

Sensu embraces monitoring as code, which equally makes it extensible as an integration partner. This turn-key integration works with many cloud platforms such as Kubernetes, GCP, Azure, AWS, Docker, Red Hat OpenShift, and OpenStack, among others. It also allows for alerts and notifications through integration with incident management tools such as ServiceNow, Slack, Jira, and VictorOps. 

For lack of a better word, Sensu has two pricing tiers: Sensu Go and Sensu Plus.

Sensu Go is free for up to 100 nodes. However, Sensu allows you to evaluate the product beyond 100 nodes using its free 14-day trial. Sensu Go Pro is suited for both SMBs and enterprise organizations and is priced at $3 per node/month. Sensu Go Enterprise is designed for large teams and costs $5 per node/month. 

Like Sensu Go, Sensu Plus is also free. However, Sensu Plus offers more features such as DPM, metric and event retention. Unlike Sensu Go Pro, Sensu Plus Pro is priced higher at $5 per node/month. In the same vein, Sensu Plus Enterprise costs more than its Go counterpart at $8 per node/month.

9

Shodan

Search Engine for Protecting IoT and Internet-facing devices

From $69/month

Shodan is like a search engine for internet-connected devices. It enables users, most especially security experts discover information and make more intelligent decisions using a variety of filters. Shodan helps to safeguard IoT endpoints and internet-facing devices like servers, routers, thermostats, maritime satellites, and even baby monitors. 

Moreover, due to its public-facing nature, it readily finds worthy use cases in industries as far-fetched and dispersed as transportation, energy, power, water treatment facilities, and much more. In that regard, Shodan also helps identify systems and sensitive devices that shouldn’t be publicly accessible for security purposes such as traffic lights, security cameras, industrial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, 

As an IoT search engine, Shodan can be used to keep track of activities on these and users’ devices by launching scans and receiving real-time alert notifications, especially when something goes awry. Hence, it allows users to gain complete visibility with connected devices and subsequently troubleshoot vulnerabilities. 

This includes identifying phishing websites, data leaks on the cloud, and compromised databases. 

Shodan can be used to limit IoT devices to local-only connections because they don’t typically need to be online or share information with other devices. Shodan provides users with convenience by offering both a command-line interface and a website app for monitoring. 

It has a developer-friendly API which allows it to integrate with several communication mediums to provide notification options such as Gitter, PagerDuty, Slack, Discord, MS Teams, Telegram, and so on. 

Shodan has three options tiers, namely Freelancer, Small Business, and Corporate priced at $69 per month, $359 per month, and $1099 per month respectively. 

10

Wireshark

Provides a granular live view of LAN and wireless network signals across communication protocols.

Free To Use

Wireshark is an open-source network tracker and troubleshooting tool for analyzing traffic. It is both a packet capture tool and a network protocol analyzer. It is ideal for discovering different kinds of network bugs, including capturing TCAP messages generated during calls. 

Its features include dividing network calls into layers, thereby facilitating better analysis and troubleshooting. When Wireshark is in operation, the users of the network don’t notice any perceptible difference in service. This is because Wireshark doesn’t intercept the network packets; they are only copied, so the stream of network traffic reaches its intended destination. 

Its GUI makes it possible to display various types of packets and filter different types of traffic. It is a network sniffer that can be used on a multi-platform basis, covering Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris, and NetBSD, among others. In addition, it also operates on LAN and wireless communications. 

Among the distinguishing features provided for the user include the ability to offer multiple levels of details, including customizable, color-coded identification of packet types. Wireshark provides a data visualization viewing panel with deep inspection and decryption support of several communication protocols. 

Wireshark allows you to generate and output reports in plain text, XML, CSV, and other formats.

Wireshark is free and open source. 

The Best IoT Testing Tools Summary

Tool Trial Info Price
1
Datadog

Real-Time Observability of Entire Infrastructure Stack Metrics in One Place.

14-day free trial

From $15/user/month (billed annually) Website
2
Appknox

Platform focused entirely on Mobile Application Security

Not available

Pricing upon request Website
3
Mobot

Automated testing for IoT devices using real-life robots that click, flip, and swipe

30-day free trial

$1,500/month/action (tap, swipe, click, etc.) Website
4
Bevywise IoT Simulator

Intelligent IoT simulation tool for testing and building IoT/MQTT applications

Not available

Pricing upon request Website
5
MATLAB

Design, deploy, and prototype IoT applications while providing thousands of functions

Not available

Pricing available upon request Website
6
CloudTest

Scalable load testing to predict unforeseen spikes in user activity

Not available

Pricing upon request Website
7
IBM Watson IoT Platform (IBM Bluemix)

Offers Real-Time IoT Monitoring

Not available

Website
8
Sensu

Framework for Building Event Pipelines with Comprehensive, Scalable Monitoring Tools

14 Days Free Trial

From $5/node/month Website
9
Shodan

Search Engine for Protecting IoT and Internet-facing devices

Not available

From $69/month Website
10
Wireshark

Provides a granular live view of LAN and wireless network signals across communication protocols.

Free To Use

Website

Other Options

Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list.

  1. Tcpdump

    Portable and simple C/C++ library for network traffic capture

  2. AWS IoT Device Defender

    Information Security For a Fleet of IoT devices

  3. Tricentis Testim

    Resilient End-to-End Automation Testing Tool For Building Trusted Tests

  4. Tricentis NeoLoad

    Scales and simplifies continuous performance testing

  5. Entrust

    Uses enterprise-grade cryptography to assign secure digital identities to connected devices.

  6. IoTIFY

    Feature-rich, cloud-based test automation platform for IoT devices.

  7. Micro Focus LoadRunner

    Helps developers and QA teams simplify load testing with a wide range of protocols

  8. Apache JMeter

    Measure performance and load test functional behavior on static and dynamic resources

What Is IoT Testing?

IoT testing provides a standardized framework to ensure IoT devices are secure and work correctly. IoT testing validates that IoT applications have the proper functionality, performance, and network availability. IoT devices come in various shapes and forms, ranging from sensors, alarms, traffic monitoring technologies, wearable tech, and smart appliances like smart TV. 

Therefore, IoT testing is important because IoT devices transmit sensitive data over the internet and have become a part of sensitive industries like healthcare tracking systems. 

What Do You Think About This List?

I would like to get your thoughts and feedback on this IoT testing list, so kindly leave a comment. 

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By Eze Onukwube

Eze has a master's degree in communications with over 10 years of experience as a software engineer. His playground is at the intersection of technology, process improvement, and simplifying IT concepts.