GitHub Security Lab's series on the OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls provides practical guidance for open-source software developers and maintainers on enhancing security, focusing on C4: Encode and Escape Data to prevent injection attacks. Injection attacks often exploit unexpected data or formatting to discover vulnerabilities, and encoding or escaping is a defensive technique to render unsafe inputs safe within executable contexts. This approach is particularly crucial for preventing cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks by ensuring that user inputs are safely rendered in different contexts, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The article highlights the importance of automatic encoding provided by frameworks and templating engines like ReactJS, AngularJS, and Rails, which help developers maintain security without constant vigilance. Additionally, it stresses using parameterized queries to avoid SQL injection and suggests considering indirection when encoding is not feasible, underscoring that while encoding may introduce some friction, it is essential for robust security measures.