Martin Knobloch -- OWASP, Reach Out; We Are Known and Misunderstood

OWASP is widely recognized, but do people understand the community behind its famous Top 10? Martin Knobloch, serving as the foundation’s board chair when this conversation was recorded in 2018, explains what the organization does and how volunteers make it work. He traces his journey from industrial control programming into software security, then describes board responsibilities, chapter leadership, and the educational value of OWASP projects. Chris and Robert explore how an open community handles disagreement, measures its impact, and reaches people outside its existing circle. Martin reflects on the organization’s growth, the role of staff, and the value of conferences for meeting contributors. His closing challenge is straightforward: reach out, share useful resources, and help more people participate in application security.

The Application Security Podcast is brought to you by Security Journey.

About Security Journey
Security Journey provides application security education for developers and everyone in the software development lifecycle.
→ Learn more about Security Journey

Connect with Martin Knobloch:
→ Martin Knobloch on LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:
→ OWASP Foundation
→ OWASP Web Security Testing Guide
→ OWASP ASVS

Follow the Application Security Podcast:
➜ Home
➜ X
➜ LinkedIn
➜ YouTube
➜ Instagram
➜ Facebook

Chapters:
00:00 Understanding the OWASP community
01:31 Martin’s security origin story
04:06 What the OWASP board chair does
07:53 OWASP’s mission and purpose
08:52 The educational value of the Testing Guide
11:04 The scale and passion of the volunteer community
14:48 Working through community disagreements
16:34 Measuring impact beyond OWASP
19:45 How OWASP changed as it grew
21:20 Supporting growth with staff and leadership
23:25 Projects Martin is working on
24:24 Why attend an OWASP conference?
28:44 A challenge to reach out