Top 10 2013-What's Next for Organizations

NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION. Please visit the OWASP Top 10 project page to find the latest edition.

Start Your Application Security Program Now

Application security is no longer optional. Between increasing attacks and regulatory pressures, organizations must establish an effective capability for securing their applications. Given the staggering number of applications and lines of code already in production, many organizations are struggling to get a handle on the enormous volume of vulnerabilities. OWASP recommends that organizations establish an application security program to gain insight and improve security across their application portfolio. Achieving application security requires many different parts of an organization to work together efficiently, including security and audit, software development, and business and executive management. It requires security to be visible, so that all the different players can see and understand the organization’s application security posture. It also requires focus on the activities and outcomes that actually help improve enterprise security by reducing risk in the most cost effective manner. Some of the key activities in effective application security programs include:

Get Started	Establish an application security program and drive adoption. Conduct a capability gap analysis comparing your organization to your peers to define key improvement areas and an execution plan. Gain management approval and establish an application security awareness campaign for the entire IT organization.
Risk Based Portfolio Approach	Identify and prioritize your application portfolio from an inherent risk perspective. Create an application risk profiling model to measure and prioritize the applications in your portfolio. Establish assurance guidelines to properly define coverage and level of rigor required. Establish a common risk rating model with a consistent set of likelihood and impact factors reflective of your organization's tolerance for risk.
Enable with a Strong Foundation	Establish a set of focused policies and standards that provide an application security baseline for all development teams to adhere to. Define a common set of reusable security controls that complement these policies and standards and provide design and development guidance on their use. Establish an application security training curriculum that is required and targeted to different development roles and topics.
Integrate Security Into Existing Processes	Define and integrate security implementation and verification activities into existing development and operational processes. Activities include Threat Modeling, Secure Design & Review, Secure Coding & Code Review, Penetration Testing, and Remediation. Provide subject matter experts and support services for development and project teams to be successful.
Provide Management Visibility	Manage with metrics. Drive improvement and funding decisions based on the metrics and analysis data captured. Metrics include adherence to security practices / activities, vulnerabilities introduced, vulnerabilities mitigated, application coverage, defect density by type and instance counts, etc. Analyze data from the implementation and verification activities to look for root cause and vulnerability patterns to drive strategic and systemic improvements across the enterprise.