Security Engineer Roadmap

Injection has topped the OWASP list for years because it keeps working. Learn to find and close SQL injection and XSS, the two flaws you will be asked about in every appsec interview and find in every real audit.

Auth and password handling are where breaches start. Store passwords correctly and spot JWT flaws like the none-algorithm bypass, so you can secure the front door every app has.

A leaked credential is a direct path in. Get secrets out of source code and scrub them from git history, because 'we found an API key in the repo' is a real, common, and resume-worthy fix.

Controlling what a request can reach and forcing it over TLS closes whole classes of attack. Path traversal and missing HTTPS are common, findable, and exactly the hardening a security hire is expected to own.

Logged-in users get attacked too. Hardening session cookies and stopping brute force are the defenses that protect real accounts, and the controls auditors check first.

Most of your code is dependencies you did not write. Patching vulnerable packages and wiring security scanning into CI is how modern teams catch issues before they ship - increasingly the security engineer's core job.