The OWASP Top 10 is a regularly updated awareness document, published by the Open Worldwide Application Security Project, that ranks the most critical security risks to web applications.
Each entry describes a category of risk, such as broken access control, injection, or cryptographic failures, and explains how the weakness arises and how to prevent it. Development and security teams use the list as a shared baseline for secure coding standards, training, and testing checklists. Its credibility comes from consensus among practitioners combined with data gathered across many organizations. The key thing to keep in mind is scope. The Top 10 is an awareness starting point, not a complete security standard, so treating a clean Top 10 review as proof of full coverage is a real mistake. It highlights the most common and impactful categories, yet plenty of important risks live outside it. Teams that get the most value use it to anchor conversations and priorities, then build broader testing and threat modeling on top.
Why does the OWASP Top 10 matter for the CISSP exam?
The OWASP Top 10 connects to Domain 8, Software Development Security, which is 10% of the exam. You can review the current list on the official OWASP site.