January 2025 Minutes

Background In light of Kevin Johnson's resignation from the OWASP Board of Directors, a motion is proposed to appoint Diego Silva Martins to fill the remainder of his term.

• e-Vote

Motion: "Resolved, that the Board appoints Diego Silva Martins to the OWASP Board of Directors, effective immediately, to serve for the remainder of Kevin Johnson's term."

• e-Vote Results

Board Members

• Ricardo Griffith: YES
• Sam Stepanyan: YES
• Harold Blankenship: YES
• Ashwini Siddhi: YES
• Steve Springett: YES
• Avi Douglen: ABSTAIN

Sponsor: Ricardo Griffith Second: Avi Douglen

Results: Passes 5 YES, 0 NO, 1 ABSTAIN

Shruti Kulkarni (Education & Training Committee officer) presented the Education Committee's status update:

• Committee Charter Update:

  • Draft Charter approved by the Committee is issued for the community review and comments - the link is available in the #leaders Slack channel

• OWASP Approved Training:

  • Discussions happened at the Project Summit in November 2024
  • Process established for training outside of AppSec events.
  • Events Committee to review submissions.
  • Blog post announcement pending.

• OWASP Certified Secure Developer (OCSD) Proposal:

  • Two levels: Foundation (language-neutral) & Advanced (language-specific).

  • Certification process to be defined, including pricing, renewals, and professional education requirements.

  • Certification platform discussions ongoing.

Background The 2025 Budget is nearing completion. There was discussion about allocating budget towards website redesign and certification programs. The 2025 Budget is being finalized and will be sent for eVote an e-vote or a vote at the next Board meeting.

Background Starr Brown to provide an update on Glue Up chapter support and the status of the Chapter Support program.

The issues with GlueUp discussed in the meeting included:

• Permissions Problem: Giving event privileges to chapter leaders also granted them access to financials and global AppSec event settings, which was a security risk.
• Backend Limitations: OWASP’s specific use case required modifications to GlueUp’s backend to properly separate roles and access levels.
• Chapters Not Fully Integrated Yet: While membership functions were operational, full chapter support was still in progress, requiring manual processing of some chapter tickets.
• Unexpected Behaviors: Some members’ statuses were not displaying correctly, such as lifetime members not being recognized in the system.
• Ongoing discussions with GlueUp support are expected to resolve the issues soon

Background The Barcelona website (https://barcelona.globalappsec.org) is now up. A quick update on our marketing activities around Barcelona from Lauren Thomas:

• Early Bird Sales Performance:

  • 205% increase compared to San Francisco.
  • 107% increase compared to Lisbon.

• Local Tickets:

  • Special pricing for attendees from Barcelona to improve accessibility.

• Marketing Strategy:

  • Expanded LinkedIn ads, promotions, and developer outreach.

• Outreach to Developer Conferences

  • DeveloperWeek 2025 engagement planned.

Background Sam will lead a discussion on policy review priorities and schedule for 2025. We are looking for approximately 1/3rd of all policies to be reviewed in 2025.

• Policies Under Review:

  • Committee policy
  • Chapter Policy
  • Membership Policy
  • Elections Policy
  • Force Majeure & Sanctions Policy
  • Expense Policy

• Next Steps:

  • Committees to review and refine their respective policies.
  • Schedule working group sessions for board-led policy discussions

Background Funding and Communications committees are proposed to be formed. The Board will discuss the formation of these committees. Governance of the committee policy, especially relating to the terms, elections, and procedures being followed by committees.

Background The previous Chair will conduct nominations from the floor for the position of Chair. The Chair will then call for a vote. Once elected, the new Chair will assume the role of Chair for the remainder of the meeting.

Motion: "Resolved, that the 2025 Chair of the Board of Directors is elected as follows: Ricardo Griffith"

Sponsor: Avi Douglen Second: Sam Stepanyan

Board Members

• Ricardo Griffith: YES
• Sam Stepanyan: YES
• Harold Blankenship: YES
• Ashwini Siddhi: YES
• Diego Silva Martins: YES
• Steve Springett: YES
• Avi Douglen: YES

Results: Passes 7-0

At this point, the acting Chair (Avi Douglen) handed the meeting over to the new Chair (Ricardo Griffith), who will run the rest of the meeting.

Background The Chair will conduct nominations from the floor for the position of Vice Chair. The Chair will then call for a vote.

Motion: "Resolved, that the 2025 Vice Chair of the Board of Directors is elected as follows: Steve Springett"

Sponsor: Ricardo Griffith Second: Diego Martins

Board Members

• Ashwini Siddhi: YES
• Avi Douglen: YES
• Diego Silva Martins: YES
• Harold Blankenship: YES
• Ricardo Griffith: YES
• Sam Stepanyan: YES
• Steve Springett: YES

Results: Passes 7-0

Background The Chair will conduct nominations from the floor for the position of Treasurer. The Chair will then call for a vote.

Motion: "Resolved, that the 2025 Treasurer of the Board of Directors is elected as follows: Harold Blankenship"

Sponsor: Ricardo Griffith Second: Diego Martins

Board Members

• Ashwini Siddhi: YES
• Avi Douglen: YES
• Diego Silva Martins: YES
• Harold Blankenship: YES
• Ricardo Griffith: YES
• Sam Stepanyan: YES
• Steve Springett: YES

Results: Passes 7-0

Background The Chair will conduct nominations from the floor for the position of Secretary. The Chair will then call for a vote. Once elected, the new Secretary will assume the role of Secretary for the remainder of the meeting, collecting minutes from the previous Secretary as necessary.

Motion: "Resolved, that the 2025 Secretary of the Board of Directors is elected as follows: Sam Stepanyan"

Sponsor: Harold Blankenship Second: Ricardo Griffith

• Ashwini Siddhi: YES
• Avi Douglen: YES
• Diego Silva Martins: YES
• Harold Blankenship: YES
• Ricardo Griffith: YES
• Sam Stepanyan: YES
• Steve Springett: YES

Results: Passes 7-0