Vendors try to protect their source code from would-be attackers, but it takes only one chink in the armor for a good reverse engineer to penetrate all the defenses so carefully put in place. Find out how to methodically uncover patterns to help you predict where the attacks will be focused and how they will be carried out.

Using manual testing to determine if your application is missing any files is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack: it's like trying to determine if your haystack is missing any needles! One tester tells the story of how some clever coding saved his project a good deal of time and quite a few headaches.

Turn to The Last Word, where software professionals who care about quality give you their opinions on hot topics. This month, see why one practitioner believes there's no such thing as a best practice.

We're pleased to bring you technical editors who are well respected in their fields. Get their take on everything that relates to the industry, technically speaking. In this issue, read about the importance of recognizing inconvenient facts—and how finding a way to change them could be the key to success.