The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is a non-profit foundation focused on improving the security of software. It’s best known for openly published resources, community-driven projects, and practical guidance that developers and security teams can use without a paywall. Its resources help organizations protect against the most critical security risks facing modern web applications.
For most software developers, the OWASP Top 10 is their first touchpoint with OWASP. But OWASP maintains far more than a single list: cheat sheets, testing guides, and verification standards that help teams build secure software from design through deployment.
The OWASP Top 10 is a widely recognized list of the ten most critical web application security risks. It’s an awareness document designed primarily for developers, not just security specialists. The goal is simple: give teams a shared mental model of the most common, most impactful vulnerabilities so they can prioritize secure coding training. Addressing these categories helps reduce recurring security vulnerabilities and improve code resilience.
OWASP updates the list roughly every three to four years using data from real-world applications, community input, and expert analysis. As of November 2025, the OWASP Top 10:2021 is the latest final version. OWASP has published a 2025 Release Candidate earlier this month.
OWASP created the Top 10 because developers needed a practical starting point in a noisy, overwhelming security landscape. Instead of asking teams to absorb hundreds of vulnerabilities, the Top 10 narrows the focus to the most critical categories, such as Broken Access Control, Injection, and Security Misconfiguration. For software developers, that means:
It’s not meant to be a complete catalog of every vulnerability, but it is the baseline for any serious secure coding program. Teams use the Top 10 to implement stronger security controls early in the development process.
The OWASP Top 10:2021 categories are:
Each category represents a family of related issues. For example, Broken Access Control covers missing authorization checks, insecure direct object references, and other flaws that let attackers act as users they shouldn’t be. These flaws often allow attackers to gain unauthorized access to restricted resources. Vulnerable and Outdated Components pose risks in libraries, frameworks, and dependencies, all critical in today’s software supply chains.
As OWASP rolls out the Top 10:2025 (currently in Release Candidate status), you can expect some categories and names to evolve, particularly around software supply chain failures and modern misconfigurations, but the 2021 list is still the main benchmark for secure web application development today. New versions aim to address emerging threats affecting cloud-native and containerized applications.
For many engineering teams, the OWASP Top 10 is where application security threats become concrete. It sits at the intersection of security best practices, compliance, and the real work of writing secure code. The OWASP Top 10 is important because it does the following:
When you embed OWASP Top 10 concepts into your development process, from design reviews and threat modeling to code review and testing, you get a more predictable, repeatable approach to secure software.
Knowing the OWASP Top 10 is not enough. Developers need hands-on practice applying secure coding principles in real applications. Effective security training should effectively:
That’s where Security Journey focuses: turning OWASP Top 10 from a checklist into a lived experience across your software development lifecycle.
Most organizations use the OWASP Top 10 as a backbone for broader security practices and secure software programs:
The key is to avoid treating OWASP as a static PDF. The most successful teams integrate it into day-to-day workflows, tooling, and conversations.
Security Journey is built to move you beyond checkbox security awareness training into real secure coding education anchored in the OWASP Top 10 and other core standards, and here’s how:
Security Journey also updates its training content monthly, including new lessons tied to emerging risks and the evolving OWASP Top 10 (such as the 2025 update), so your teams stay aligned with the latest application security threats and security practices.
If you want your developers to move beyond basic security awareness and actually build, break, and fix real applications, Security Journey can help. Our hands-on OWASP Top 10 training, role-based learning paths, and data-driven assessments give teams the confidence to ship secure software at scale.