C2: Use Cryptography to Protect Data

What C2: Use Cryptography to Protect Data requires

OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls 2024, C2: Use Cryptography to Protect Data. Sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, health records, personal information and business secrets require extra protection, particularly if that data falls under privacy laws (EU's General Data Protection Regulation GDPR), financial data protection rules such as PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or other regulations. This is one of the OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls (2024 edition), the OWASP Foundation's list of the ten most important security techniques that every software architect and developer should build into every project. Where the OWASP Top 10 enumerates the most critical web application security risks, the Proactive Controls enumerate the defensive techniques that prevent them. Organizations should treat this control as a design requirement, an implementation checklist, and a continuous-verification obligation, supported by a security policy, automated testing in the CI/CD pipeline, developer training, and incident response.

Pillar: Cybersecurity · Authority: OWASP Foundation (Open Worldwide Application Security Project) · Version: 1.0.0 · Last updated: 2026-07-17

Primary source: https://top10proactive.owasp.org/archive/2024/the-top-10/c2-crypto/

SHA-256 integrity: b98ac2fcb82b6dcf2d0ce823060c46f98b96ed73b0ed7085604f256eef659992

Primary Citations — 13 traced to source

• OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls 2024, C2 Use Cryptography to Protect Data, Implementation: 'Never transmit plain-text data. The technical capability exists to easily encrypt all data that is sent between any point A and B. Embrace the use of cryptography to protect all data at rest and in transit.'
• OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls 2024, C2 Use Cryptography to Protect Data, Implementation: 'Do not create your own cryptographic protocols. The creation of a cryptographic protocol is a tricky proposition. When NIST created AES, they had an open competition where the best cryptographers worldwide submitted proposals and then looked for flaws in the other proposals. Instead of using your developer cycles to create a new crypto protocol, use an existing, battle-tested standard. Focus your innovation on making your feature or product better.'

+ 11 more citations (full bibliography, deterministic workflow, actionable schema and crosswalks) included in the vault unlock — $0.01 via Skyfire / L402 / Direct Base USDC.

Access

• Discovery (free): /api/v1/nodes/owasp-proactive-controls-2024-c2-use-cryptography-to-protect-data.json — 6-field metadata
• Vault (full node): /api/v1/vault/nodes/owasp-proactive-controls-2024-c2-use-cryptography-to-protect-data.json — full 13-key payload, $0.01 USDC (L402/Skyfire/Direct Base)
• Canonical URL: https://bidda.com/intelligence/owasp-proactive-controls-2024-c2-use-cryptography-to-protect-data
• Back to registry: Browse all 10,085 compliance nodes