The OWASP Top 10 is a regularly updated list, published by OWASP, that identifies the ten most critical security risks facing web applications. It is one of the most widely recognized and influential documents in the field of application security, serving as a foundational awareness and prioritization tool for developers, security professionals, and organizations worldwide. Rather than an exhaustive catalog of every possible vulnerability, it distills the most prevalent, impactful, and important categories of web application risk into a focused list that helps teams direct their security efforts where they matter most.
OWASP produces the list based on data gathered from across the industry – including vulnerability data from many organizations and surveys of security practitioners – so that it reflects the real-world state of application security. It is periodically revised (roughly every few years) to keep pace with the changing threat landscape, with categories added, removed, merged, or reranked as risks evolve. Each edition presents the risks as broad categories, describes what they are, explains their impact, and offers guidance on prevention.
The categories in the OWASP Top 10 have historically included risks such as Broken Access Control (failures to properly restrict what authenticated users can do, which rose to the top of the list), Cryptographic Failures (weaknesses in protecting data through encryption), Injection (including SQL injection and cross-site scripting, where untrusted input is misinterpreted as commands), Insecure Design (flaws rooted in design rather than implementation), Security Misconfiguration, Vulnerable and Outdated Components, Identification and Authentication Failures, Software and Data Integrity Failures, Security Logging and Monitoring Failures, and Server-Side Request Forgery, among others across editions.
The OWASP Top 10’s significance is broad and deep. It provides a common language and shared understanding of the most important web application risks, enabling teams to communicate about security consistently. It guides secure development practices, informs security training and testing, and is frequently referenced by standards, compliance frameworks, and security tools. Many organizations use it as a baseline: ensuring their applications are defended against the Top 10 is often considered a minimum bar for application security.
It is worth distinguishing the general OWASP Top 10 from the OWASP API Security Top 10. The former focuses on web application risks broadly; the latter addresses the distinct risks that APIs face, which differ significantly. Both are valuable, and modern applications – which typically combine web front-ends with API back-ends – benefit from attention to both lists. Ultimately, the OWASP Top 10 endures as a cornerstone reference that helps the industry understand and prioritize the web application risks most likely to cause real harm.