AppSec USA 2013 - The Purpose of OWASP, an Interview with Co-Founder Dennis Groves

Many people in the OWASP community don't know Dennis Groves... and that's a surprise since he is one of the co-founders of the movement. I was able to catch up with Dennis at AppSec USA in New York City (November 19, 2013) and we had an interesting discussion about the beginnings of OWASP and what he sees in the future. Highlights of our Discussion * The event that triggered the inspiration for OWASP * The original purpose of OWASP * The use of OWASP as a de facto standard * Future vision for OWASP * The dilemma of community obligation About Dennis Groves Dennis Groves's work focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to risk management. He is particularly interested in risk, randomness, and uncertainty. He holds an MSc in Information Security from the University of Royal Holloway where his thesis received a distinction. He is currently a UK expert for the UK mirror of ISO subcommittee 27, IT Security Techniques, working group 4, Security Controls and Services at the British Standards Institute. He is most well known for co-founding OWASP. His contributions to OWASP include the ‘OWASP Guide (v1)’ downloaded over 2 million times; now a reference document in the PCI DSS standard, and the de-facto standard for securing web applications. He is a thought leader in the web application security space, where he has spent the last decade of his career. Dennis Groves has been an Security Architect, Ethical Hacker, Web Application Security Consultant, IT Security Consultant, System Administrator, Network Administrator, and a Software Engineer. He has taught various courses on information security and is best known for his ability to bring fresh insight to difficult security problems. Specialties:Risk Management, Threat Modeling, Security Architecture, Application Security, and "the big picture".