About This Course
The modern web is a critical business enabler — and an ever-expanding attack surface. As organisations increasingly rely on web applications for commerce, communication, and core operations, the consequences of a security breach have never been more severe. From SQL injection and cross-site scripting to broken authentication and insecure APIs, the threats facing web-facing systems evolve daily, and the professionals responsible for defending them must stay ahead.
TrainingComplex's Web Security and Best Practices Training is a rigorous, five-day programme designed to give IT practitioners, developers, and security professionals both the conceptual grounding and the practical tools needed to secure web environments effectively. The course is structured around widely adopted industry frameworks — including the OWASP Top 10, NIST guidelines, and ISO/IEC 27001 principles — and translates them into actionable techniques that participants can apply immediately in their organisations.
Through a combination of instructor-led instruction, live demonstrations, hands-on labs, and collaborative case study analysis, delegates will learn to assess web application vulnerabilities, implement robust security controls, configure secure development pipelines, and respond to incidents decisively. The programme balances technical depth with strategic awareness, ensuring that participants can both execute security tasks and communicate risk effectively to stakeholders.
Whether your organisation is strengthening an existing security posture or building one from the ground up, this course delivers the skills, frameworks, and confidence needed to protect web assets, preserve customer trust, and meet compliance obligations in a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
Who Should Attend
- Web developers and software engineers who build or maintain web applications
- IT security analysts and cybersecurity practitioners
- System administrators responsible for web server environments
- Network engineers managing web-facing infrastructure
- Application architects and technical leads
- DevOps and DevSecOps engineers integrating security into CI/CD pipelines
- IT managers and team leads overseeing web security functions
- Compliance and risk officers with responsibility for digital systems
Learning Objectives
- Understand the web security threat landscape and the most prevalent attack vectors targeting web applications
- Apply the OWASP Top 10 framework to identify and remediate common web vulnerabilities
- Implement secure coding practices across front-end and back-end development environments
- Design and enforce robust authentication, authorisation, and session management controls
- Configure HTTPS, TLS, and secure communication protocols correctly
- Conduct web application vulnerability assessments using industry-standard tools
- Secure RESTful APIs and third-party integrations against common exploitation techniques
- Apply input validation, output encoding, and parameterised queries to prevent injection attacks
- Develop and execute an incident response plan specific to web application breaches
- Integrate security controls into DevSecOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines
- Comply with relevant data protection and web security regulatory requirements
Course Modules
Module 1: The Web Security Threat Landscape
- Evolution of web-based attacks and current threat intelligence
- Understanding the attacker mindset: reconnaissance, exploitation, and persistence
- Key industry frameworks: OWASP, NIST, and ISO/IEC 27001 in web security context
- Classifying web vulnerabilities: severity, exploitability, and business impact
- Threat actors and their motivations: cybercriminals, nation-states, hacktivists, and insiders
- Using CVE databases, threat feeds, and bug bounty disclosures to stay current on emerging risks
Module 2: OWASP Top 10 Deep Dive
- Injection flaws: SQL, LDAP, OS command, and XML injection
- Broken access control and insecure direct object references
- Security misconfiguration, vulnerable components, and software integrity failures
- Cryptographic failures, SSRF, and identification and authentication failures
- Insecure design: threat modelling failures and the distinction from implementation-level weaknesses
- Security logging and monitoring failures: how insufficient visibility enables attack dwell time
Module 3: Secure Coding Principles and Practices
- Principles of security-by-design and defence in depth
- Input validation, output encoding, and safe data handling
- Error handling, logging, and avoiding information disclosure
- Secure coding standards and code review checklists for development teams
- The principle of least privilege applied to code: minimising permissions, API surface, and data access
- Managing dependencies securely: pinning versions, vetting third-party packages, and monitoring for known CVEs
Module 4: Authentication, Authorisation, and Session Management
- Implementing multi-factor authentication and password policies
- OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and JWT security considerations
- Session token generation, storage, expiry, and invalidation best practices
- Role-based and attribute-based access control design patterns
- Account enumeration, credential stuffing, and brute-force defence mechanisms
- Privilege escalation risks and enforcing consistent authorisation checks across all application layers
Module 5: Transport Security and Secure Communication
- Configuring TLS 1.2 and 1.3: certificates, cipher suites, and key management
- HTTPS enforcement, HSTS, and mixed-content vulnerabilities
- Secure cookie attributes: HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite, and domain scoping
- Content Security Policy (CSP) and other HTTP security headers
- Certificate pinning, certificate transparency logs, and detecting rogue certificate issuance
- Subresource Integrity (SRI) for third-party scripts and stylesheets loaded over CDN
Module 6: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- Reflected, stored, and DOM-based XSS: mechanics and real-world examples
- Bypassing client-side input filters and WAF evasion techniques
- CSRF attack anatomy and the conditions that enable it
- Defending against XSS and CSRF with encoding, tokens, and security headers
- Mutation XSS and framework-specific pitfalls in React, Angular, and Vue template rendering
- SameSite cookie policy nuances and the impact of cross-origin resource sharing on CSRF mitigations
Module 7: API Security and Third-Party Integration Risks
- OWASP API Security Top 10: broken object-level and function-level authorisation
- Securing RESTful and GraphQL APIs: authentication, rate limiting, and schema validation
- Managing third-party libraries, supply chain risks, and software composition analysis
- API gateway configuration, logging, and anomaly detection
- Handling sensitive data exposure in API responses: field filtering, data masking, and versioning discipline
- Webhook security: validating inbound payloads, preventing replay attacks, and securing callback endpoints
Module 8: Web Application Vulnerability Assessment
- Scoping and methodology for web application penetration testing
- Using Burp Suite and OWASP ZAP for manual and automated scanning
- Interpreting vulnerability scan results and prioritising remediation
- Reporting findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Business logic testing: identifying flaws in workflows that automated scanners routinely miss
- Retesting and verification: confirming effective remediation and maintaining an accurate risk register
Module 9: DevSecOps and Secure CI/CD Pipelines
- Integrating security gates into CI/CD workflows with SAST and DAST tools
- Secrets management: preventing credential leakage in code repositories
- Container and web server hardening for production environments
- Security testing automation and shift-left security culture
- Infrastructure-as-code security scanning: identifying misconfigurations in Terraform, Helm charts, and Dockerfiles before deployment
- Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation and its role in rapid vulnerability triage during zero-day events
Module 10: Incident Response and Web Security Governance
- Developing a web application incident response plan: roles, playbooks, and escalation
- Forensic evidence preservation and post-breach analysis techniques
- Regulatory obligations: GDPR, PCI-DSS, and national data protection laws
- Building a continuous improvement programme for web security posture
- Containment strategies for active web compromises: isolating affected systems while preserving service availability
- Metrics and KPIs for web security governance: measuring mean time to detect, remediate, and report vulnerabilities
Requirements & Prerequisites
Participants should have a working knowledge of web technologies, including HTML, HTTP/HTTPS, and at least one server-side programming language such as Python, PHP, Java, or Node.js. Familiarity with basic networking concepts and the use of a command-line interface is recommended. Prior formal training in cybersecurity is helpful but not required, as the course begins with a thorough grounding in the web security landscape before advancing to more technical content.
Training Methodology
- Hands-on vulnerability labs using intentionally vulnerable web applications such as DVWA and WebGoat to practise exploitation and remediation in a safe environment
- Live instructor demonstrations of attack techniques — including SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF — followed by guided defence exercises
- OWASP Top 10 case study workshops where teams analyse real-world breach scenarios and map findings to remediation strategies
- Secure code review exercises using sample codebases across multiple languages to identify and fix common weaknesses
- Tool-based vulnerability scanning sessions using Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP, and Nikto with structured analysis of scan outputs
- Group threat modelling exercises applying the STRIDE methodology to realistic web application architectures
- API security labs involving the testing and hardening of RESTful endpoints against OWASP API Security Top 10 risks
- Individual reflection assignments requiring participants to draft a security improvement plan tailored to their own organisation's web environment
Organisational Benefits
- Reduced exposure to web-based attacks that can result in data breaches, financial penalties, and reputational damage
- A workforce capable of embedding security into the software development lifecycle from the outset
- Improved compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR, Kenya's Data Protection Act, and PCI-DSS
- Faster detection and containment of web application incidents, minimising operational disruption
- Stronger customer and stakeholder confidence through demonstrably secure web services
- Reduced technical debt caused by insecure code identified late in the development process
- A shared security language and culture across development, operations, and IT management teams
- Cost savings from proactive vulnerability management rather than reactive breach remediation
Where Is Web Security and Best Practices Training Offered?
This course runs in-person across: Accra, Mombasa, Nakuru, Kampala, Riyadh, Zanzibar, Abuja, Nairobi, Lagos, Dar es Salaam, Cape Town, Dubai, Kigali, Kisumu, Pretoria, Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, Arusha, Naivasha, plus Live Virtual (online) cohorts. Browse live dates for your city below.
Upcoming Schedules
| Location | Format | Dates | Price |
|---|
| Accra, Ghana |
In-Person |
5 Oct 2026 – 9 Oct 2026 |
USD 3,800 |
| Mombasa, Kenya |
In-Person |
5 Oct 2026 – 9 Oct 2026 |
KES 115,000 |
| Nakuru, Kenya |
In-Person |
12 Oct 2026 – 16 Oct 2026 |
KES 115,000 |
| Live Virtual |
Online |
17 Oct 2026 – 8 Nov 2026 |
KES 80,000 |
| Kampala, Uganda |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 1,900 |
| Riyadh, Saudi Arabia |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 4,500 |
| Zanzibar, Tanzania |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 2,500 |
| Abuja, Nigeria |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 2,800 |
| Nairobi, Kenya |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
KES 115,000 |
| Lagos, Nigeria |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 2,500 |
| Dar es Salaam, Tanzania |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 2,300 |
| Cape Town, South Africa |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 3,800 |
| Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 4,100 |
| Kigali, Rwanda |
In-Person |
19 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026 |
USD 1,900 |
| Live Virtual |
Online |
26 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026 |
KES 80,000 |
+237 more dates — view live schedule →
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be a cybersecurity specialist to attend this course?
No specialist security background is required, but participants should be comfortable working with web technologies and have at least basic programming knowledge. The course begins with foundational concepts before progressing to more advanced technical content, making it accessible to experienced developers and administrators who are new to security.
What tools will we use during the hands-on labs?
Participants will work with industry-standard tools including Burp Suite Community Edition, OWASP ZAP, and Nikto, as well as intentionally vulnerable practice environments such as DVWA (Damn Vulnerable Web Application) and WebGoat. All lab environments are provided by TrainingComplex — delegates do not need to install anything in advance.
Will I receive a certificate upon completing the course?
Yes. Participants who attend and complete the full five-day programme will receive a TrainingComplex Certificate of Completion in Web Security and Best Practices. This certificate can be used as evidence of continuing professional development and referenced in professional profiles.
Is this course aligned with any international certification frameworks?
The course content is aligned with OWASP, NIST SP 800-115, and ISO/IEC 27001 principles, and covers significant portions of the knowledge domains relevant to certifications such as CEH and CompTIA Security+. While it does not directly prepare delegates for a specific exam, it provides a strong practical foundation for pursuing those credentials.
Can this course be delivered in-house for our entire IT team?
Yes. TrainingComplex offers customised in-house delivery of this programme for organisations that wish to train multiple team members together. In-house sessions can be tailored to your organisation's specific technology stack, threat environment, and compliance requirements — contact TrainingComplex to discuss scheduling and pricing.
