OWASP

The OWASP Foundation, Inc. is a United States 501(c)3 nonprofit charity governed by a Global Board and administered by its executive director, staff, and contractors. It was founded in 2004 and functions as the governing body of OWASP, which comprises the infrastructure, community, and projects. The Foundation ensures that the community’s projects and activities are sustainable and aligned with its mission. 

OWASP was founded in 2001 as the Open Web Application Security Project, with a mission to make application security visible so that organizations could make informed decisions about application security risks. This initiative aimed to address the lack of comprehensive, vendor-neutral information on web application security available at the time. OWASP published the first edition of the OWASP Top Ten in 2003. This document identified the ten most critical web application security risks plus information on how to mitigate these risks. Other organizations like MITRE and the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) quickly recognized this document as an industry standard. 

Other early accomplishments include the OWASP Development Guide, which provided guidance on secure coding practices, and the OWASP Testing Guide, which offered a comprehensive framework for penetration testing. From 2006 to 2015, OWASP continued to publish updated versions of these guides and added new projects like Enterprise Security API (ESAPI), Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS), the Open Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM), the Mobile Security Project, and many more.

Since 2016, OWASP has published additional Top Ten documents, including the Mobile Top Ten and API Security Top Ten. Work has continued on earlier projects, and the organization has intensified efforts to recruit new members and increase their global events. 

OWASP originally stood for the Open Web Application Security Project. The Board voted to change the “W” from “Web” to “Worldwide” in early 2023 to reflect the organization’s expansion into other types of work.

OWASP is home to hundreds of projects, but it has only four primary functions:

• Education and awareness: OWASP provides educational resources, conducts training sessions, and organizes workshops to raise awareness about application security. The community also publishes research and documentation to help developers and security professionals follow best practices and avoid common vulnerabilities.
• Tool development: Open-source tools like OWASP Dependency-Check, Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP), and WebGoat help companies identify and prevent application vulnerabilities.
• Community building: Global conferences and local chapters allow members to share knowledge, brainstorm, and collaborate on projects or other work.
• Standards and best practices: OWASP creates and promotes security standards, frameworks, guidelines, and policies to help companies fully secure their resources.

Projects are community-driven initiatives to improve software security in a specific way. OWASP categorizes projects into several types, including Flagship projects, tools, documentation, and more. Below are some OWASP Flagship projects that have demonstrated strategic value to application security:

• OWASP Top Ten: A regularly updated report that outlines the ten most critical web application security risks
• OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP): An open-source web application security scanner
• OWASP Security Knowledge Framework (SKF): A tool that helps developers understand and implement secure coding practices
• OWASP Cheat Sheet Series: A collection of concise guides on various application security topics

Production projects are production-ready but have not reached the same level of maturity or adoption as Flagship projects. Some examples:

• OWASP API Security Project: Like the OWASP Top Ten, but for API security rather than application security
• OWASP CSRFGuard: A library designed to mitigate the risk of Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks
• OWASP ModSecurity: The standard open-source web application firewall (WAF) engine

There are far too many OWASP projects to list here. The OWASP Foundation provides the resources and infrastructure to ensure the success of OWASP projects.

Related terms

• OWASP Top Ten
• API Security
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
• Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
• SQL Injection
• Web Application Security
• Web Application and API Protection (WAAP)

Further reading

• Threat Spotlight: How attackers are targeting your web applications right now
• Threat Spotlight: Web apps under active threat from 10-year-old Shellshock bugs and miners
• Threat Spotlight: How bad bot traffic is changing
• Shadows, zombies, and Twilio’s wide-open API
• Barracuda OWASP Security Projects blog
• Dell: 49 million customer records exposed in 1 automated attack
• OWASP Website

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