What is Sandbox | Importance, Benefits & How it Works?

The need to experiment with new technology has never been greater in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape. However, the risks associated with untested and potentially malicious code can incur significant challenges for developers, businesses, and security professionals. Thus, we need an isolated and controlled environment where applications and code can be executed and tested without affecting the broader systems used for higher settings. There comes Sandbox.

What is a Sandbox?

Sandbox is a sample testing environment that provides a secure space for experimentation during the software development cycle. It also applies when you are learning a new skill and want to learn practically about different features that exist without exhausting real-world environments/data centers.

Importance of Sandboxes

Sandboxes act as safeguarded environments in which programs can be run. They isolate applications, preventing them from harming the main system or stealing user data. This ensures the main system’s stability, security, and privacy.

What is the Purpose of a Sandbox?

The purpose of a sandbox is to provide a safe environment for users to test new software or run untrusted code. Sandboxes isolate programs and applications from the rest of the system, preventing them from accessing or damaging critical system resources or other applications.

Benefits of a Sandbox

There are many benefits to using a sandbox, including:

• Security: Sandboxes can help to protect systems from malware and other cyber threats.
• Reliability: Sandboxes can help improve systems’ reliability by preventing programs and applications from interfering with each other.
• Privacy: Sandboxes can help to protect user privacy by preventing programs and applications from accessing sensitive user data.
• Testing: Sandboxes can test new software or run untrusted code in a safe environment.
• Education: Sandboxes can be used in educational settings to provide students with a safe environment to experiment with new software and technologies.

What are the Major Drawbacks of the Sandbox?

A few drawbacks to using sandboxes include:

• Performance: Sandboxes can introduce some overhead, impacting the performance of programs and applications running in a sandbox.
• Complexity: Sandboxes can be complex to configure and manage, especially for enterprise users.
• False positives: Sandboxes can sometimes generate false positives, which may flag legitimate programs and applications as malicious.

Pros and Cons of Sandboxing

The pros of sandboxing include:

• Improved security,
• Increased stability,
• Improved performance,
• Increased flexibility

The cons of sandboxing include:

• Reduced performance,
• Increased complexity,
• Potential for security vulnerabilities

Role of Sandbox in Test Automation

Test Environment Replication: Allows testers to replicate the production environments accurately. This facilitates an environment that closely resembles the original environment, which helps in identifying any compatibility or configuration issues early in the testing phase. Read here- Test Environment

Safe Test Execution: When test automation scripts are created initially, where do you test them? Definitely not in a Production environment. This is where a sandbox can be created and used. This ensures that critical systems are not impacted and any bugs present in the test automation scripts generated are troubleshooted in the sandbox environment that’s completely isolated, and the infrastructural or application impact is only going to affect the sandbox environments.

Read all about Test Execution.

Parallel Test Execution: Multiple instances of the sandbox environment can be created, allowing simultaneous execution of various types of tests across different configurations. This helps improve the efficiency of test automation by reducing time and enabling broader test coverage.

Test Case Validation and Debugging: Testers can analyze the behavior of the application under test within the sandbox, identify any issues or failures, and perform necessary debugging steps without risking disruptions in the live environment.

Read about Testing vs Debugging.

Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD): Sandboxes facilitate integration with CI/CD pipelines, enabling automated testing as part of the development and deployment process. By incorporating sandbox environments into the CI/CD workflow, test automation can be seamlessly integrated, allowing for rapid feedback and early detection of issues before software releases.

Examples of Using a Sandbox 

Here, we’ll outline the key differences between the two workflows:

Manual Testing Workflow in a Sandbox Environment:

• Sandbox Environment Setup: provision a sandbox environment that replicates the production environment as accurate as possible.

• Test Planning: Define your test objectives, goals, and scope. Create a test plan with all the details related to the manual testing strategy, including which test cases to execute.

• Test Case Preparation and Data: Develop or gather manual test cases and ensure that the test cases cover the desired functionalities, edge cases, and user scenarios. Prepare test data, including valid and invalid inputs, to use during testing.

• Test Execution and Reporting: Manually execute test cases in the sandbox environment. Testers interact with the application’s user interface, input data, and observe results.

• Regression and Exploratory Testing: After defects are fixed, manually retest affected areas. Confirm that defects have been resolved without introducing new issues. Conduct ad-hoc testing to discover issues that might not be covered by formal test cases.

• Feedback and Review: Gather feedback from testers, developers, and stakeholders to assess the application’s quality Review testing results to determine if the application meets the defined acceptance criteria.

• Release Planning: once the testing is done, plan the release of the application to the production environment. If approved, deploy the tested application to the production environment.

Now that we saw how the manual testing on sandbox works, let’s see how automation testing in sandbox occurs.

Automation Testing Workflow in a Sandbox Environment:

• Sandbox Setup: Create or provision a sandbox environment that replicates the production environment as closely as possible.

• Test Automation Planning: Define testing objectives and scope for automated testing. Select and configure automated testing tools and frameworks.

• Test Script Development: Create automated test scripts using chosen automation tools. Ensure that test scripts cover functional and regression test cases.

• Test Data Setup: Prepare test data, often using automated data generation or import processes.

• Continuous Integration (CI) Integration and Continuous Deployment (CD): Integrate automated tests into the CI/CD pipeline for continuous testing.

For any kind of test automation, you can rely on tools like testsigma which acts as an end-to-end test automation tool.

Automate your tests for web, mobile, desktop applications and APIs from the same place, and execute them on 3000+ devices and browsers, with Testsigma

How Does a Sandbox Work?

So far we discussed what a sandbox is, what is the purpose of using it, and the different roles the sandbox plays in different scenarios. Now we will see how exactly this sandbox works.

Isolation

Firstly, the sandbox isolates the environment by creating a separate operating system and other related processes which are totally in different networks and storage.

Virtualization

Sometimes, even though a new environment is created using a different OS, it is easier to store and maintain the experimental environment such as a sandbox in a virtual infrastructure such as a virtual machine. So, it is recommended to create a sandbox environment in a virtual environment and use technologies such as containerization in practice.

Access Restrictions

Once the sandbox environment is created, certain configurations are done to prevent access of any files to and fro the environment. For example, if you want to access a db file from the dev environment from your sandbox environment, it is blocked.

Monitoring

Once the environment is used, the environment is closely monitored. A system call is a request made by the application to the operating system for performing various tasks, such as file operations, network communication, or memory access. By intercepting and analyzing these system calls, the sandbox can enforce restrictions and prevent unauthorized actions.

Controlled termination of sandbox

If the sandboxed application behaves unexpectedly or poses a threat, the sandbox can be terminated safely, preventing any negative impact on the host system.

How Do You Set Up a Sandbox Environment?

Setting up sandbox may vary depending on needs and technology you’re working on. The steps are as follows:

Firstly, Choose your technology stack. Here you will understand which type of sandbox environment you want to create. For example, VMs, containers,s or some software specific to your use case. Choosing this depends on how you want to deploy your application like in the form of containers or so. Read more here.

Next, you install the software like the sandbox applications such as docker, virtual box, and some other apps we discussed in the previous section. Once the sandbox environment is set, create the resources and configure some settings on it as a part of access control.

Sandbox Applications

Some of the applications that make use of Sandbox environment are as follows:

Docker

It has several editions which enable various kinds of applications to run. It enables us to work on development and staging environments which are basically sandbox environment that lets you test your application developments and testing in your local system and private repositories. This tool is specifically used to run containerized applications. It can be run on all kinds of operating systems: Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Sandboxie

This is one of the most popular sandbox environment tool which enables you to work on windows OS only. It enables safe browsing feature which allows you to run a browser in sandbox environment which in turn provides security to your system. It also provides resource access control.

Read about Browser Sandox.

Firejail

Unlike Sandboxie which is a windows operating system based sandboxing application, Firejail is a linux based sandboxing system. We use servers to generally deploy our applications consisting of various environments such as development, staging, production and many more. When you have to run an experimentation on your application among such critical systems, it is risky and not recommended. Firejail provides the leverage of an entire environment free from any critical systems. Linux is a developer-friendly operating system and this tool is just like a cherry on top!

Conclusion

In conclusion, sandbox technology has emerged as a powerful solution in the world of technology and software development, addressing critical needs for security, testing, and innovation.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is the sandbox created?

Creating a sandbox is like setting up a safe and enclosed play area for your computer. To do this, you can use special software called a “sandboxing tool” that isolates your applications or code from the rest of your computer. This prevents anything inside the sandbox from affecting the main system, making it a secure space to test new programs or browse the web without worrying about viruses or malware.

What are the features of a sandbox?

There are many features due to which sandbox environments are popular. Some of the main features are its feature of isolation, the added security configurations availability, testing, and validation features for both manual and automated methods, and its flexibility for custom configurations.