Achievements and Awards

Distinguished Lifetime Membership Awards

2024

• OWASP Distinguished Lifetime Award

  •    Daniel Cuthbert
    From the early days of OWASP, Daniel has been on a relentless quest to build software so secure that even he might struggle to hack it (but don’t count on it). Self-diagnosed with an obsession for bugs and offensive operations, he’s turned his penchant for poking holes into a crusade for making vendors shape up. By channeling his mischief into the ASVS and other cunning initiatives, he’s been plotting to save the software world—one responsible vendor at a time.
    
    

  •    Tanya Janca
    Tanya Janca, aka SheHacksPurple, is the best-selling author of ‘Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding’, ‘Alice and Bob Learn Application Security’ and ‘Cards Against AppSec’. Over her 28-year IT career she has won countless awards (including OWASP Lifetime Distinguished Member and Hacker of the Year), spoken all over the planet, and is a prolific blogger. Tanya has trained thousands of software developers and IT security professionals, via her online academies (We Hack Purple and Semgrep Academy), and her live training programs. Having performed counter-terrorism, led security for the 52nd Canadian general election, developed or secured countless applications, Tanya Janca is widely considered an international authority on the security of software.
    
    

  •    Riotaro OKADA
    Executive Director of Asterisk Research, Inc., OWASP Lifetime Member, a Japan Chapter Lead, Contributor, MBA, CISA, CSA holder
    
    

2023

• OWASP Distinguished Lifetime Award

  •    Simon Bennetts
    
    

  •    Ricardo Pereira
    
    

  •    Rick Mitchell
    
    

  •    Jim Manico
    
    

2021

• OWASP Distinguished Lifetime Award

  •    Dave Wichers
    See his interview here
    
    

  •    Fiona Collins
    
    

  •    Jeff Williams
    See his interview here
    
    

  •    Mark Curphey
    
    

  •    Matteo Meucci
    
    

WASPY Awards

2024

• Chapter Person of the Year

  •    Martin Knobloch
    2006: Attending my first OWASP AppSec conference, the OWASP AppSec in Belgium (and only missed two since)
    2007: Joining the OWASP Netherlands Chapter Board
    2008: First time presenting at an OWASP conference, the OWASP Australia Security Conference at Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
    2008: Chairing the OWASP Education committee, as result of attending the first OWASP Summit in Portugal
    2009: Co-organizing the first OWASP BeNeLux-Day, and all of them since
    2010: First active involvement in an OWASP AppSec conference, hosting the CTF in Sweden
    2011: Co-organizing the OWASP Summit 2011
    2015: Conference Chair of the OWASP Global AppSec EU in Amsterdam
    2017: Joining the OWASP Global Foundation Board of DIrectors, until 2022
    2019: Joining the OWASP Europe Board
    Over the years, I have been promoting, mentoring and supporting OWASP in general; the various projects, chapters and events. The leaders, organizers, members and volunteers. Anyone trying to find their way into AppSec.
    

• Project Person of the Year

  •    Felipe Zipitria
    Felipe Zipitria is an expert in computer security, graduated with an MSc from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. With over 20 years of experience in SRE, DevOps, and SysAdmin roles, Felipe has transitioned into specialized areas, dedicating the past 5 years to AppSec and Cloud SecOps. His extensive expertise spans security consulting for over a decade. Passionate about education, Felipe instructs pregraduate students in Computer Security Fundamentals and guides postgraduates in Web Application Security at the local public University, with the help of OWASP published materials. He started as the Uruguay Co-Chapter Leader in 2013, and started engaging in projects with global outreach. He is a longstanding contributor to OWASP CRS, serving as a developer and co-leader since 2021 and he is part of the OWASP Coraza leadership team, focusing on the development of new Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). Committed to fostering open-source engagement, he has served as a Google Summer of Code mentor for four consecutive years, nurturing students involvement in open-source and OWASP initiatives.
    

• Event Person of the Year

  •    Shruti Kulkarni
    Shruti Kulkarni is a cyber security / enterprise security architect with experience in ISO27001, PCI-DSS, policies, standards, security tools, threat modeling, risk assessments. Shruti works on security strategies and collaborates with cross-functional groups to implement information security controls in software development life-cycle, service operations, service delivery such that security controls support business requirements. An ardent fan, Shruti joined OWASP in 2013 and is currently project leader for Developer Guide and is the Secretary of the Education Committee.
    

2023

• Project Person of the Year

  •    Brian Glas
    Brian has more than 22 years of experience in various roles in IT with the majority of that in application development and security. His day job is serving as Department Chair and Assistant Professor teaching a full load of Computer Science and Cybersecurity classes at Union University. He helped build the FedEx AppSec team, worked on the Trustworthy Computing team at Microsoft, consulted on software security, and served as a project lead and active contributor for SAMM v1.1-2.0+ and OWASP Top 10 2017, 2021, and 2024. Brian is a contributor to the RABET-V Program for assessing non-voting election technology. He holds several Cybersecurity and IT certifications and is working on his Doctor of Computer Science in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance.
    

• Event Person of the Year

  •    Meghan Jacquot
    Meghan Jacquot is a Security Engineer with Inspectiv and focuses on vulnerabilities and attack surface management. She is particularly interested in application security, threat intelligence, investigating vulnerabilities, and the ethical use of data. Meghan shares her research via conferences and publications. Throughout the year, she helps a variety of organizations and folks including DEF CON as a SOC GOON, Diana Initiative, OWASP, SANS, and WiCyS. To relax she also spends time visiting national parks, gardening, and hanging with her chinchilla. She’s happy to connect with others on LinkedIn and Mastodon and her handle is CarpeDiemT3ch.
    

• Chapter Person of the Year

  •    Sam Stepanyan
    Sam Stepanyan is an Independent Application Security Consultant and Security Architect with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry with a background in software engineering and web application development. Sam has worked for various financial services institutions in the City of London specialising in Application Security consulting, Secure SoftwareDevelopment Lifecycle (SDLC), developer training, source code reviews and vulnerability management. He is also a Subject MatterExpert in Web Application Firewalls (WAF) and SIEM systems. Sam holds a Master’s degree in Software Engineering and a CISSP certification. Sam has been serving as an OWASP London Chapter Leader since November 2015 (with Sherif Mansour) and as OWASP Chapter Committee Chair since August 2020. Sam is also a Project Leader of OWASP Nettacker and a co-leader of OWASP WAFEC project. Sam is a frequent speaker at several BSides conferences as well as OWASP Global AppSec conferences.
    

2022

• Chapter Person of the Year

  •    Thomas Ljungberg Kristensen
    Thomas has been developing secure software since graduating with a master’s degree in computer science from Aarhus University in 2006. He has created and tested software, tools and processes in and for large corporations in the finance, energy, and military sectors. Thomas currently runs his independent security consulting firm, WelcomeSecurity based in Silkeborg, Denmark, where he helps people and businesses view security as a business enabler and a value improvement instead of a cost and a pain – To welcome security in software development!
    Since 2019, Thomas has been an active volunteer with the OWASP Aarhus, Denmark, chapter as co-chapter lead trying to make people aware of the excellent free resources from OWASP and providing a meeting place for people to talk about it-security and to network.
    

• Event Person of the Year

  •    Izar Tarandach
    Izar Tarandach is the Principal Security Engineer at Squarespace, a published author and presenter on Threat Modeling. With past tenures in leadership security positions at Autodesk, in a major hedge fund, DellEMC, RSA, IBM and others, he was a core contributor to SAFECode and a founding contributor to the IEEE Center for Security Design. He holds a masters degree in Computer Science/Security from Boston University and has served as an instructor in Digital Forensics and in Secure Development in grad-level courses. He co-leads the development of pytm, a threat-modeling-with-code OWASP Incubator project.
    

• Project Person of the Year

  •    Nancy Gariche
    Nancy is a Senior Developer Advocate for the GitHub Security Lab, where she helps security researchers and developers collaborate and communicate better. In her spare time co-leads the OWASP DevSlop Project and is a member of the AWS Community Builder group. Nancy was named one of the Top 20 Women Leaders in Cyber in Canada, 2021.
    

2021

• Outstanding Project - OWASP ZAP

  •    ZAP
    See Simon (psiinon) and Rick’s interview here
    

  •    Rick Mitchell (kingthorin)
    Rick’s focus on Web Application Security represents more than half of his 20+ year IT career. You may know him for his work as a co-lead of the ZAP project, however Rick can also be credited for his contributions to the Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM), Web Security Testing Guide (WSTG), Vulnerable Web Applications Directory (VWAD), and OWASP community content. Rick is a security assessment and testing trainer for part of his work, a lightning talk presenter at the Ottawa OWASP chapter meetings and AppSec USA, OWASP Ottawa volunteer, and has helped with project promotion assessments during previous AppSec USA conferences. Rick enjoys helping others learn and challenge themselves, and strongly believes that together we can and do make the industry better.
    

  •    Ricardo Pereira
    

• Outstanding Educator

  •    Tanya Janca
    See interview here
    

• Outstanding Community Supporter

  •    Tanya Janca
    See interview here
    

• Oustanding Innovator

  •    Bjoern Kimminich
    See his interview here
    

2017

• Best Innovator

  •    Seba Deleersnyder
    

• Best Mission Outreach

  •    Mark Miller
    

• Best Community Supporter

  •    Nicole Becher
    

  •    Dinis Cruz
    

  •    Jeremy Long
    

2016

• Global/Growing Category

  •    Kathy Thaxton
    

• Innovation/Sharing Category

  •    Owen Pendlebury
    

• Integrity/Learning Category

  •    Eoin Keary
    

• Open/Leading Category

  •    Dinis Cruz
    

2015

• Global/Growing for the United States Region

  •    Jerry Hoff
    

• Global/Growing for the Latin American Region

  •    John Vargas
    

• Global/Growing for the European Region

  •    Jason Alexander
    

• Global/Growing for the Asia/Pacific/Middle East Region

  •    John Patrick Lita
    

• Global/Growing for the African Region

  •    Munir Njiru
    

• Innovation/Sharing Category for the United States Region

  •    Jeremy Long
    

• Innovation/Sharing Category for the Latin American Region

  •    Diego Ademir
    

• Innovation/Sharing Category for the European Region

  •    Fiona Collins
    

• Innovation/Sharing Category for the Africa Region

  •    Munir Njiru
    

• Integrity/Learning Category for the Caribbean Region

  •    Johanna Curiel
    

• Integrity/Learning Category for the Asia/Pacific/Middle East Region

  •    John Patrick Lita
    

• Integrity/Learning Category for the United States Region

  •    Pedro Peralta
    

• Integrity/Learning Category for the European Region

  •    OWASP Student Chapters Program Leaders (Antonis Manaras & Mateo Martinez)
    

• Open/Leading Category for the Caribbean Region

  •    Johanna Curiel
    

• Open/Leading Category for the Latin American Region

  •    Mateo Martinez
    

• Open/Leading Category for the United States Region

  •    Jeremiah Grossman
    

• Open/Leading Category for the European Region

  •    Eoin Keary
    

2014

• Best Platform Supporter

  •    Johanna Curiel
    

• Best New Community Supporter

  •    AppSecAPAC 2014 Team
    

• Best Mission Outreach

  •    AppSecUSA 2013 Team
    

• Best Project Leader

  •    Simon Bennetts
    

• Best Chapter Leader

  •    Japan Chapter Leaders
    

2013

• Best Innovator

  •    Abbas Naderi
    

• Best Mission Outreach

  •    Martin Knobloch
    

• Best Community Supporter

  •    Fabio Cerullo
    

• Best Project Leader

  •    Simon Bennetts
    

• Best Chapter Leader

  •    Tin Zaw, Richard Greenberg, Kelly Fitzgerald, Stuart Schwarz, & Edward Bonver (LA Chapter Leaders)
    

2012

• WASPY Award

  •    Helen Gao
    Helen received a certificate, a $1000 gift card, an iPad and a trophy.