The OWASP Top 10 is an awareness standard for critical web application risks. The 2025 edition continues to place Broken Access Control first, highlighting how often applications fail to enforce what users are allowed to do.
Why this matters
Cybersecurity failures are rarely caused by one missing product. They usually emerge from a chain of weaknesses across people, process, identity, configuration and visibility. A useful security approach therefore focuses on reducing likely attack paths and improving the organisation’s ability to make decisions under pressure.
Priority actions
- Test authorisation at every sensitive action
- Secure defaults and configuration matter
- Treat software supply-chain risk as an engineering concern
How to apply this in practice
Begin by identifying the systems, data and business processes that would cause the greatest harm if they became unavailable, were altered or were disclosed. Review who can access them, how activity is monitored and how recovery would work.
Assign clear owners and deadlines to improvements. High-risk findings should be handled first, but long-term resilience also depends on repeatable governance: regular reviews, tested procedures, staff awareness and evidence that controls continue to work.
Questions leaders should ask
- What business service are we protecting, and what would failure cost?
- Who owns the risk and who owns the remediation?
- How would we detect that this control had failed?
- When did we last test the response or recovery process?
- What evidence shows that the improvement is complete?
This article provides general information and is not legal, regulatory or incident-specific advice.