Ask the Customer Support Team!

Q: What is secure testing? How should I implement/troubleshoot secure testing?

A: There are a lot of options for our test settings in EMSTesting. One of which is the ability to enable secure testing. It is essential to know what is involved and its limitations before enabling this for your students.

When secure testing is enabled it has the students install a secure testing browser. When installed, when a student clicks begin test, it then opens the test in secure testing browser. When secure testing is open it does not let the students navigate to other sites or applications. This is a great way to lessen cheating or looking up answers.

Secure testing can only be used on Windows, Mac OS, or iPad. This will not work on phones/mobile devices besides the iPad. It will also not operate/install on Chromebooks at this time. The links for downloading and installing secure testing browser are in your student’s test instructions before they begin. They just download the file, then run the file from its downloaded location to run through the installer. After fully installed, they go to ‘begin test’ on a normal browser, and it will open the test in the secure testing browser.

The secure testing option is a setting per test. This can be enabled by being logged in as an instructor, clicking a class then clicking ‘edit class’. From here go to the ‘tests’ tab. If you ‘edit’ a test that has been added (or add a new test), it will let you change the test settings. The ‘Require Platinum Secure Testing’ is the checkbox that you can check/uncheck to enable/disable this function.

Student Troubleshooting

If a student is having problems launching a secure testing test, first, they need to make sure they are on a compatible device. Must be an operating system running windows 10/11 (S Mode is not compatible) or Mac OS 10.12 to 12+ (including up-to-date iPads). 

If the students are clicking begin the test and agree to secure testing yet it doesn’t open, there may be software that isn’t allowing secure testing to open. Most often these are particular antivirus programs. Most antivirus programs have a ‘temporary disable’ feature. Temporarily disabling the antivirus can often allow secure testing to now open. Also just making sure no other software is running on the computer except for the browser that is going to initially launch the test, can help a lot too. Secure testing’s function makes it so other software running, or switching to other windows besides secure testing, is blocked. So if there is something else running, it may interfere with the initial startup of secure testing. 

Often students only have trouble on the first test before they’ve installed secure testing. They’ll run through the steps, but secure testing isn’t launching at all. Often in this case the software was downloaded through the link on the test page but wasn’t actually installed. In this case, the student must run the file/installer that was downloaded. The software must be installed like any other software. Just having the student re-download the file, and run through the full installer, fixes their secure testing issue.

As always if your students have any issues, have them start a chat with our support team from the ‘help’ icon on the lower right of our website.