OWASP Top 10 2025: A Practical Guide for Application Owners
The OWASP Top 10 is the closest thing application security has to a common language. The 2025 edition — the first since 2021 — reshuffled the list, merged several classic entries, and added categories that reflect how modern applications actually fail.
What changed
The most notable shifts:
- Broken Access Control (A01) stayed at the top — it has been the #1 risk for three editions running
- Security Misconfiguration moved up to A05
- Outdated and Vulnerable Components returned to the list (A06)
- A07: Identification and Authentication Failures replaced the older "Authentication Failures" framing
- A10: SSRF stayed on the list, a reminder of how often servers are abused as proxies
The 2025 top 10 at a glance
- Broken Access Control
- Cryptographic Failures
- Injection
- Insecure Design
- Security Misconfiguration
- Vulnerable and Outdated Components
- Identification and Authentication Failures
- Software and Data Integrity Failures
- Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
- Server-Side Request Forgery
Where to start
If your budget only covers a few fixes, prioritize in this order:
- Fix broken access control first. It's the most common critical finding in our assessments — object IDs in URLs, missing checks on PUT/PATCH handlers, and admin APIs exposed without authorization.
- Patch known CVEs. An outdated library with a public exploit is a fire, not a tech-debt item.
- Harden error handling and logging. You cannot respond to what you cannot see.
What "compliance" actually means here
Passing a VAPT against the OWASP Top 10 is a snapshot, not a certificate. The real goal is a repeatable process: threat modeling at design time, secure defaults, automated scanning in CI, and manual testing before every release.
At NIMR, we map every finding back to the OWASP Top 10 and ISO 27001, NIST, and GDPR controls so your fixes land in the right place. Need a fresh look at your application? Request an assessment.