In OWASP 2003, A10 Insecure Configuration Management combines related risk themes across Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration includes unsafe defaults, exposed services, and missing hardening controls. These weaknesses are often exploited as a chain: attackers start with weak input or trust boundaries, pivot through authorization or session gaps, and then move toward data exposure, integrity loss, or service disruption. Operationally, this can increase incident frequency, enlarge blast radius, and raise both remediation cost and compliance exposure when controls are missing or inconsistently enforced across services.
For OWASP 2003 A10 Insecure Configuration Management, apply defense in depth across design, implementation, deployment, and operations rather than relying on a single control. Priority controls include: Harden defaults, disable unused services, patch regularly, and maintain environment-specific secure baselines. Treat mitigation as a continuous program: define security requirements up front, enforce them in CI/CD gates, and verify effectiveness with threat modeling, code review, automated testing, and recurring penetration testing. Add monitoring and incident-response readiness so misconfigurations, abuse patterns, and control regressions are detected early and corrected before they become repeatable attack paths.
The same feature written the risky way, then with the fix applied.
How this risk has ranked in each OWASP release.
Rank by release (taller is higher)
2025Latest
#02A02 Security Misconfiguration
↑ Up 3 since 20212021
#05A05 Security Misconfiguration
↑ Up 1 since 20172017
#06A6 Security Misconfiguration
No change since 20102010
#06A6 Security Misconfiguration
↑ Up 4 since 20042004
#10A10 Insecure Configuration Management
No change since 20032003
#10A10 Insecure Configuration Management
