In OWASP 2007, A9 Insecure Communications combines related risk themes across Transport Layer Protection, Cryptographic Failures. Transport security issues expose data in transit due to weak TLS configuration or insecure channels. Cryptographic failures expose sensitive data due to weak encryption choices, bad key handling, or missing protection. 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 2007 A9 Insecure Communications, apply defense in depth across design, implementation, deployment, and operations rather than relying on a single control. Priority controls include: Enforce TLS 1.2+, disable weak ciphers, enable HSTS, and validate certificates in all client-server channels. Use modern algorithms, managed key rotation, secure random generation, and encryption for data at rest and in transit. 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
A04 Cryptographic Failures
2021
#02A02 Cryptographic Failures
↑ Up 7 since 20102010
#09A9 Insufficient Transport Layer Protection
No change since 20072007
#09A9 Insecure Communications
