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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Security Manager

💰 $ - $

SecurityITWebDevSecOps

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Security Manager leads the strategy, operations, and governance for web and application security across web applications, APIs, and associated cloud and on-premise services. This role combines hands-on technical leadership (application security testing, secure SDLC, vulnerability management, WAF tuning), program management (policy, risk assessment, vendor oversight), and cross-functional collaboration with engineering, product, DevOps, and compliance teams to reduce web attack surface and maintain business continuity.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Application Security Engineer with hands-on appsec and code review experience
  • Security Architect or Cloud Security Engineer focusing on web app and API protection
  • Technical Product Security Lead or Security Operations Lead with web-focused exposure

Advancement To:

  • Director of Application Security
  • Head of Cybersecurity / VP of Security Engineering
  • Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for mid-market organizations

Lateral Moves:

  • DevSecOps Lead
  • Cloud Security Manager
  • Security Risk & Compliance Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop, own and continuously improve the enterprise web security strategy and roadmap, aligning priorities with engineering, product, and executive stakeholders to reduce risk against OWASP Top 10 and modern web threats.
  • Lead the design, deployment, and tuning of Web Application Firewalls (WAF) and API security controls (including managed WAF, containerized WAF, and cloud-native protections) to prevent, detect, and mitigate web-based attacks.
  • Create and operate a robust vulnerability management program focused on web applications and APIs, from discovery and risk-based prioritization through remediation tracking and verification.
  • Conduct and supervise regular application security assessments including SAST, DAST, SCA/software composition analysis, interactive application security testing (IAST), and authenticated dynamic scans for web and API endpoints.
  • Manage third-party penetration test programs and red team engagements specifically targeting web infrastructure; translate findings into prioritized remediation plans and engineering tickets.
  • Integrate security gates into CI/CD pipelines and automated test suites to enforce secure coding practices and prevent regression of security vulnerabilities in web releases.
  • Define secure SDLC policies, coding standards, and threat modeling practices for web engineering teams; embed secure design reviews and threat model walkthroughs into product planning cycles.
  • Lead incident response for web application security incidents and API abuse, coordinating triage, containment, root cause analysis, communications, and post-incident remediation and lessons learned.
  • Own web application security metrics and KPIs (e.g., time-to-remediate, exploitation risk score, open critical vulnerabilities, WAF block/false-positive rates) and report risk posture to executives and the board.
  • Evaluate, select, and manage security tooling and vendors for web protection (WAF, RASP, bot management, DDoS mitigation, API gateways) including procurement, SLAs, integration, and ROI analysis.
  • Collaborate with product managers and engineering to ensure secure design of web features, align on authentication/authorization controls (OAuth, SAML, OIDC), session management, and secure API patterns.
  • Drive secure configuration and hardening standards for web servers, application runtimes, API gateways, load balancers, and cloud-managed web services across AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid architectures.
  • Lead training programs, secure coding workshops, and targeted coaching for engineers and QA to raise application security maturity and reduce vulnerability reoccurrence in web systems.
  • Maintain up-to-date threat intelligence on web-specific attack vectors (XSS, CSRF, SQLi, SSRF, API abuse, credential stuffing) and translate intelligence into preventive controls and detection rules.
  • Conduct privacy and regulatory impact assessments for web properties, ensuring compliance with GDPR, CCPA, PCI-DSS, HIPAA (where applicable) and integrating privacy-by-design into web development practices.
  • Architect and enforce robust authentication, authorization, and identity management practices for web and API ecosystems, including MFA, RBAC, fine-grained permissions, and token lifecycle management.
  • Lead cross-functional breach readiness exercises, tabletop simulations, and runbooks focused on web compromise scenarios to tighten detection, escalation, and remediation playbooks.
  • Partner with SRE/Platform teams to ensure observability and logging are implemented for web services (WAF logs, access logs, API usage, anomaly detection) and feed telemetry into SIEM/SOAR for automated detection.
  • Monitor and maintain an accurate inventory of web applications, APIs, public endpoints, and associated third-party integrations to reduce shadow IT and unmanaged attack surfaces.
  • Define and enforce secure data handling and encryption standards for web applications, including TLS configuration, encryption-at-rest, tokenization strategies, and proper use of secrets management.
  • Establish and operationalize a bug bounty or coordinated vulnerability disclosure program for external reporting and prioritized remediation of web vulnerabilities.
  • Coach and mentor a team of application security engineers and analysts, hiring and scaling capabilities as the web security program expands.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist legal and privacy teams with breach notifications and evidence collection related to web incidents.
  • Represent security in customer-facing security reviews and RFP / vendor security questionnaires related to web security posture.
  • Maintain documentation of web security processes, runbooks, and knowledge base articles for internal stakeholders and auditors.
  • Evaluate emerging web security technologies and proof-of-concepts to continually modernize defenses and improve automation.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Web application security testing: deep experience with SAST, DAST, IAST, and authenticated scanning workflows.
  • Web Application Firewalls (WAF): deployment, tuning, rule writing, false-positive reduction, and cloud WAF platforms (AWS WAF, Azure Front Door, Cloudflare, Imperva).
  • Secure SDLC & DevSecOps: integrating security tooling and gating into CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, CircleCI).
  • Threat modeling and secure design for web and API architectures (STRIDE, PASTA or similar methodologies).
  • Vulnerability management platforms and orchestration (e.g., Tenable, Qualys, Rapid7) and vulnerability triage processes.
  • CI/CD and container security: experience securing containerized web applications (Docker, Kubernetes) and artifact scanning.
  • Identity and access management for web: OIDC, OAuth2, SAML, JWT, session security, cryptography basics, MFA.
  • API security: OWASP API Top Ten, rate limiting, quota management, API gateway configuration, schema validation.
  • Penetration testing and red team knowledge specific to web layers, including exploitation and proof-of-concept development.
  • Cloud security for web platforms: secure configuration of load balancers, CDN, serverless web functions, and IAM in AWS/Azure/GCP.
  • Log analysis and SIEM integration: building detections for web threats using Splunk, Elasticsearch, Datadog, or cloud-native logging tools.
  • Privacy and compliance: knowledge of GDPR, PCI-DSS, SOC 2 as they pertain to web applications and customer data.
  • Programming and scripting: proficiency in at least one language used by engineering teams (Python, JavaScript/Node.js, Java, Go) for automation and code reviews.
  • Bot management and abuse mitigation: implementing fraud detection, credential stuffing defenses, and behavioral analytics.

Soft Skills

  • Strong cross-functional communication: able to translate technical risk to product and executive stakeholders.
  • Leadership and people management: experience hiring, mentoring, and growing high-performing application security teams.
  • Program management and prioritization: running multi-quarter security initiatives and aligning engineering delivery with risk appetite.
  • Problem solving and analytic thinking: rapidly triaging security incidents and deriving root cause and remediation paths.
  • Stakeholder influence and negotiation: convincing product/engineering teams to prioritize security work without slowing innovation.
  • Customer-facing skills: conducting security reviews and articulating technical controls to customers and partners.
  • Teaching and coaching: designing training and onboarding materials that raise developer security competency.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: keeping pace with rapidly evolving web threats and security tooling.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Computer Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or a related field, or advanced certifications in application security and cloud security.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Software Engineering
  • Computer Engineering
  • Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–12+ years in information security or application security roles, with at least 3–5 years specifically focused on web/application security or managing security teams.

Preferred:

  • Prior experience managing a web or application security program for SaaS or large-scale consumer web products.
  • Hands-on background in penetration testing, WAF administration, cloud security, and secure SDLC implementation.
  • Certifications such as CISSP, CSSLP, OSCP, GWAPT, CCSP, or cloud security certifications (AWS/Azure/GCP) are a strong plus.
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