On the iBuildings blog today there's a post from Boy Baukema about the use of the OWASP ASVS to help provide a framework of questions to ask about your application to help find any application security "pain points."

When a customer commissions Ibuildings for a new application, he usually has plenty of functional demands. [...] And maybe some thoughts have been given to performance metrics, but security? Well… it “needs to be secure”. [...] It is said, conveniently enough mostly by software engineers, that building software is perhaps the most complex activity humans have ever undertaken.

He notes that "security is not a checkbox, it's a dropdown" and should be continuously considered continuously through out development. The OWASP ASVS provides a structure that a development group can follow to test the security of their application. It defines 4 types of testing/validation and fourteen other topics to consider.

While ASVS is a wonderful addition, it has it’s issues: verification and reporting can take a significant amount of time and validation rules are not specific enough to use the tools and techniques.