A Discussion on OWASP Autonomous Penetration Testing Standard (APTS)

Announcing the OWASP Autonomous Penetration Testing Standard (APTS) | Conversation with OWASP Autonomous Penetration Testing Standard (APTS) lead Jinson Varghese.

Autonomous penetration testing is evolving at breakneck speed. Modern AI and autonomous platforms can already map complex attack paths, make critical exploitation decisions, and execute actions with minimal human intervention.
The core challenge isn’t capability,, it’s control. While the cybersecurity industry has robust standards for manual pentesting and high-level frameworks for general AI governance, a massive gap remains: How should an autonomous system behave safely when it is actively exploiting a live production environment?

Enter APTS (Autonomous Penetration Testing Standard).
Hosted by the OWASP® Foundation, APTS sets the standards for the next generation of security testing. It provides concrete frameworks for:

• Scope Enforcement – Ensuring autonomous agents never wander outside boundaries.
• Safe Execution – Preventing destructive payloads and minimizing operational downtime.
• Human-in-the-Loop Intervention – Defining exactly when and how a human operator must step in.
• Auditability & Accountability – Creating deterministic logs of every automated decision and exploit.

The goal of APTS isn’t to redefine the fundamentals of pentesting, but to ensure that autonomous security systems operate within clear, controlled, and safe boundaries.

GET INVOLVED & CONTRIBUTE

The first version is now officially live! If you are a security researcher, AI engineer, enterprise buyer, or developer building or evaluating autonomous pentesting platforms, your feedback is crucial.
Help us shape the future of autonomous security standard operations.

P.S. Anyone and everyone willing to shape these standards, and contribute to them is welcome to directly contribute below. While initiated by the team at Astra Security, the standard is for the world and of the world to contribute, and governed by OWASP® .

Read the standard and contribute here: https://github.com/OWASP/APTS/

Special Thanks:

Thank you to the OWASP® Foundation for hosting this project and providing a collaborative home for this standard, and to the team at Astra Security for their relentless support in bringing this framework to life.

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