Developers face a number of challenges and pressures when creating an application most obviously, the need to meet release deadlines. When approaching a looming deadline, security is sometimes deprioritized, so the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top Ten list was created as an easy reference for developers to learn about major web application security issues and to use as a starting point when performing security assessments.

OWASP is one of the more well-known and highly regarded organizations in the cybersecurity space. This nonprofit is dedicated to improving the state of web application security by bringing attention to the most common and impactful security issues.