OWASP Proactive Controls OWASP Foundation

This document will also provide a good foundation of topics to help drive introductory software security developer training. These controls should be used consistently and thoroughly throughout all applications. However, this document should be seen as a starting point rather than a comprehensive set of techniques and practices. These include things such as injection, broken authentication and access control, security misconfigurations, and components with known vulnerabilities. But the list doesn’t offer the kind of defensive techniques and controls useful to developers trying to write secure code. The OWASP Top Ten Proactive Controls 2018 is a list of security techniques that should be included in every software development project.

• If you must store sensitive data then make sure it’s cryptographically protected in some way to avoid unauthorized disclosure and modification.
• Strong authentication can prevent vulnerabilities such as broken authentication and session management, and poor authentication and authorization.
• A user story focuses on the perspective of the user, administrator, or attacker of the system, and describes functionality based on what a user wants the system to do for them.

You can use that data for feeding intrusion detection systems, aiding forensic analysis and investigations, and satisfying regulatory compliance requirements. Developers writing an app from scratch often don’t have the time, knowledge, or budget to implement security properly. Using secure coding libraries and software frameworks can help address the security goals of a project. According to OWASP, a security requirement is a statement of needed functionality that satisfies many different security properties of software. Requirements can be drawn from industry standards, applicable laws, and a history of past vulnerabilities.

Implement security logging and monitoring

For example, a start date needs to be input before an end date when choosing date ranges. One is blacklisting, where you compare the input against a list of malicious content. The other is whitelisting, which uses rules to define what is “good.” If input satisfies the rules, then it’s accepted. Before an application accepts any data, it should determine whether that data is syntactically and semantically valid in order to ensure that only properly formatted data enters any software system component. Organizations are realizing they can save time and money by finding and fixing flaws fast.

The OWASP Proactive Controls is one of the best-kept secrets of the OWASP universe. Everyone knows the OWASP Top Ten as the top application security risks, updated every few years. Proactive Controls is a catalog of available security controls that counter one or many of the top ten. The OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls is similar to the OWASP Top 10 but is focused on defensive techniques and controls as opposed to risks. Each technique or control in this document will map to one or more items in the risk based OWASP Top 10. This mapping information is included at the end of each control description.

How to Use this Document¶

And developers are discovering that great coding isn’t just about speed and functionality, but also minimizing security risk. Let’s explore each of the OWASP Top Ten, discussing how the pieces of the Proactive Controls mitigate the defined application security risk. Test cases should be created to confirm the existence of the new functionality or disprove the existence of a previously insecure option. Use these techniques to prevent injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities as well as client-side injection vulnerabilities.

Secure frameworks and libraries can provide protection against a wide range of web application vulnerabilities, but they must be kept current so known vulnerabilities are patched. The checklists that follow are general lists that are categorised to follow the controls listed in the
‘OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls’ project. These checklists provide suggestions that certainly should be tailored to
an individual project’s requirements and environment; they are not meant to be followed in their entirety.

A01 Broken Access Control

TLS must be properly configured in a variety of ways in order to properly defend secure communications. The process includes discovering / selecting, documenting, implementing, and then confirming correct implementation owasp top 10 proactive controls of new security features and functionality within an application. As developers prepare to write more secure code, though, they’re finding that few tools are designed with software writers in mind.

Strong authentication can prevent vulnerabilities such as broken authentication and session management, and poor authentication and authorization. Cryptographic authentication is considered the highest form of authentication and requires a person or entity to have proof of possession of a key through https://remotemode.net/ a cryptographic protocol. Although useful in foiling obvious attacks, blacklisting alone isn’t recommended because it’s prone to error and attackers can bypass it by using a variety of evasion techniques. Use the extensive project presentation that expands on the information in the document.