OWASP Awards

Awarded for the Project Person of the Year Jannik joined the OWASP around 2017 after being introduced to the Juice Shop project at university. He then became a regular contributor to the Juice Shop project and created the MultiJuicer project to enable people to run trainings and workshops with Juice Shop. He is now a project lead for both the OWASP Juice Shop and OWASP secureCodeBox projects.

Awarded for Event Person of the Year Jim Manico has been deeply involved in the OWASP community for more than two decades, beginning his volunteer journey in 2003. Over the years he has taken on a wide range of leadership and hands-on roles. - Global Governance. Elected to OWASP’s Global Board of Directors (2011 – 2014), where he helped shape the foundation’s strategic direction, fundraising model, and community-driven governance. - OWASP Cheat Sheet Series (2009 – present) - Co-founder and long-time project manager, coordinating dozens of security cheat sheets that distill complex topics into actionable, developer-friendly guidance. - OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) & Artificial Intelligence Security Verification Standard (AISVS) - Core contributor and project manager, ensuring that both standards remain technically rigorous, developer-centric, and mapped to modern threat landscapes. - Regular contributor to other flagship initiatives, including the OWASP Top Ten and Proactive Controls. - Community Building & Education. A frequent keynote speaker and trainer at AppSec USA, AppSec EU, and dozens of local OWASP chapters, Jim has delivered hundreds of secure-coding workshops worldwide, championing open knowledge and evidence-based practices. - Recognition. Honored with OWASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2023) for sustained, high-impact service—a testament to his belief in the foundation’s mission of “making software security visible, so that individuals and organizations can make informed decisions. A true believer in OWASP’s open, vendor-neutral ethos, Jim remains an active contributor, mentor, and evangelist—continuing to advance the state of software security through community-driven standards, education, and tooling.

Awarded for Chapter Person of the Year John is a Lifetime Member of OWASP, having first joined in 2014, while living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. He has been active in the New Zealand Chapter since moving to Auckland in late 2017. John took on a leadership role in the New Zealand Chapter in April 2018, restarting the Auckland Meetup, which he led until May 2024, when he moved to Hamilton. Once settled there, John launched the Hamilton Meetup, which is now going strong. John became Chair of the annual OWASP New Zealand Day conference in 2019, keeping it going through COVID lockdowns, border closures, and travel bans. This year, he is coaching his successor, so he can ‘retire’ as conference chair after his seventh. John helped organize the student-focused security.ac.nz event, in 2019 and 2022. He also organizes OWASP Training Day events around New Zealand. Beyond the chapter, John has been a member of the OWASP SAMM Project’s core team since 2018, has been part of the Chapters and Education and Training Committees, and has founded a number of small OWASP projects.

Andrew has been involved with OWASP since near the beginning 25 years ago. He has been a project leader for several flagship projects, a chapter leader, an ex-Board member, and is currently the Executive Director of the OWASP Foundation.

When Christian Folini made his debut at the OWASP AppSec conference in Milan in 2007, he quickly found himself invited to share his insights on a panel discussing the emerging PCI DSS Web Application Firewall (WAF) requirements. During the years, he has evolved into a cornerstone of the open-source WAF community. As the author of the second edition of the ModSecurity Handbook he is one of the go-to experts for all things rule language. Folini introduced groundbreaking concepts such as the OWASP CRS Paranoia Levels and the notion of strict siblings. His innovative spirit led to the design of the CRS plugin architecture and the inception of the CRS dev-on-duty program. Moreover, Folini played a key role in transitioning ModSecurity to become a part of the OWASP Foundation. Beyond his contributions to OWASP, Christian Folini is a member of the steering committee for the Swiss National Cyber Strategy. He is also the public face of the Swiss Cyber Storm conference and continues to shape the cybersecurity landscape both in Switzerland and on a global level.

Outside of his day job as an AppSec practitioner, Josh has been involved with OWASP in many different roles. This includes serving as a co-leader of the Israel chapter (and co-organizing the legendary AppSecIL conference), serving as a member of the events committee, and also working as a co-leader of the OWASP ASVS project.

Sebastien (Seba) Deleersnyder, co-founder and CTO of Toreon, combines software engineering expertise with a passion for holistic product security. After earning his Master’s in Software Engineering from the University of Ghent, he became a driving force in the security community as founder of the Belgian OWASP chapter, OWASP Foundation Board member, and co-founder of BruCON, Belgium’s annual security conference. His leadership of OWASP SAMM and decade-long role as a highly-rated Black Hat trainer have significantly impacted global software security.