OWASP Top 10:2025 & Security by Design

The industry-standard list of the most critical web application security risks, applied through a “security by design” (assume-breach, zero-trust, shift-left) approach.

Definition

The OWASP Top 10 is the widely-adopted reference for web application security risks. Per Web Development Best Practices 2026: Engineering Guide, the 2025 revision ranks **broken access control 1**, security misconfiguration #2, and **software supply-chain failures 3** — the last reflecting how one compromised npm package or GitHub Action can compromise thousands of targets. Web apps and APIs remain the #1 breach vector (Verizon DBIR), with average breach cost >$4.8M.

“Security by design” operationalizes it: zero-trust (authenticate/authorize/rate-limit every request), secure defaults (HttpOnly+Secure+SameSite cookies, no tokens in localStorage, strict CSP), supply-chain hygiene (pin deps, SBOMs, Snyk/Socket/Dependabot), least privilege (RBAC/ABAC, short-lived tokens), and defense in depth (WAF + anomaly detection). Enforced via SAST/DAST/SCA in CI (CI/CD & Automation (DORA Elite)) that blocks merges on critical findings. Established (OWASP is an authoritative body).

Key Properties

• 2025 top risks: broken access control (#1), misconfiguration (#2), supply-chain (#3).
• Assume breach; verify everything; automate defense (zero-trust).
• Shift-left: SAST/DAST/SCA in every PR, block on critical/high.
• Secure defaults: HttpOnly cookies, strict CSP L3, security headers, short-lived tokens.
• Supply chain is now a first-class threat (SBOMs, signed commits, trusted base images).

Examples from Sources

In the Sources

Related

Concepts: CI/CD & Automation (DORA Elite), Web Architecture & Scalability, Clean Code & Maintainability Entities: Vercel, TypeScript