OWASP Top 10 for LLM Apps: Controls and Testing 2025

The OWASP Top 10 for LLM applications is the shortest path to a shared security language for product, security, and compliance teams. Knowing the list is useful. Proving you test against it is what reduces risk.

What the OWASP LLM Top 10 means for teams

You are dealing with prompt injection, insecure output handling, data leakage, training data poisoning, supply chain issues, overreliance on model outputs, excessive agency in tools, denial of service, inadequate monitoring, and weak governance. Each risk points to a specific control you can test.

Map risks to practical controls

• Prompt injection: input neutralization, template allowlists, and attack corpora tests

• Insecure output handling: schema validation and policy checks before any tool action

• Data leakage: retrieval scoping, PII redaction, and response scrubbing

• Training data poisoning: dataset provenance, canary tests, and change logs

• Excessive agency: smallest possible tool scopes, rate limits, and approval steps

• Inadequate monitoring: per request logs with model, prompt, context, and tool traces

How to test your OWASP alignment

• Red team prompts that exercise injection, jailbreaks, and tool misuse

• Static checks for unsafe input and output handlers in integration code

• Continuous monitoring to spot anomalies and policy violations

• Avido Evaluation and Monitoring to automate runs and retain evidence

Lightweight operating model

1. Define a minimal control set per OWASP risk.
2. Build tests for each control with clear pass and fail conditions.
3. Run tests before release and on a schedule in production.
4. Record failures, decisions, and fixes with owners and timestamps.

What to avoid

• Treating OWASP as a one time checklist

• Letting model outputs trigger tools without validation

• Missing logs for prompts, contexts, and actions

• Shipping changes without a quick control run

FAQs

What is the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs in practice?

It is a list of the most common AI security failures. The value comes from mapping each risk to a control you can test and monitor, not from memorizing the names.

How do we prove compliance to stakeholders?

Keep run histories for red team sets, static checks, and monitoring alerts. Tie these to versions and policies. Evidence beats claims when auditors ask questions.

Can we automate OWASP testing?

You can automate large parts of it. Attack corpora, schema validation, and policy checks run well in CI. Human red teaming remains important for creative gaps.

What is the fastest control to implement?

Structured output validation. Force the model to return a predictable schema and block tool calls that do not pass policy checks.

How do we keep pace as threats evolve?

Refresh your attack sets monthly and add new patterns from incidents and public research. Monitoring should surface novel failures so your tests improve over time.

If you want OWASP aligned runs that create audit ready evidence, talk to Avido about Evaluation and Monitoring.