Bridging the Gap: How to Ensure Seamless Collaboration Between Security & Development Teams

Written by Urvi Mehta, ArmorCode.

In today's interconnected digital landscape, software serves as the backbone, driving the evolution of increasingly sophisticated applications. While this evolution fuels progress and exciting features, it also creates a vast playground for cyber threats.

Simple, standalone programs are a thing of the past; today's applications are intricate ecosystems with interconnected parts and sensitive data. Therefore, collaboration between security and development teams is no longer optional, but essential. Only by working together, openly communicating, and sharing responsibility can we build applications where security is ingrained from the start.

Traditionally, security and development teams have operated in different worlds. Developers prioritize speed and functionality, aiming to deliver features and updates promptly. On the other hand, security professionals focus on risk mitigation, compliance, and protecting the organization's assets. This dichotomy can lead to delays, friction, and, most importantly, security vulnerabilities slipping through the cracks.

A compelling solution to address this challenge is the emergence of Application Security Posture Management (ASPM). ASPM serves as a powerful platform to align the priorities of security and development teams, fostering a proactive and secure development environment.

How can ASPM help align security and development teams?

Application Security Posture Management offers a holistic approach to bridging the gap between security and development teams. It provides a platform that integrates security governance into the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), ensuring that security is not an afterthought but an integral part of the process from the project's inception.

Here are a few ways ASPM helps security and development teams work better together:

1. Security Governance Across the SDLC

By integrating with all scanning tools from the very initiation of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), ASPM ensures unified visibility and governance. This strategy guarantees that security professionals and developers systematically tackle potential risks and threats throughout every stage of application development, from inception to completion.

2. Ongoing Prioritization and Feedback

ASPM establishes real-time risk status and progress tracking as a standard practice. This real-time feedback loop enables development teams to promptly address emerging threats. With intelligent risk scoring, ASPM utilizes threat intelligence and business context to assist security and development teams in prioritizing vulnerabilities with significant business impact.

3. DevSecOps Automation

Enhancing collaboration across teams, ASPM establishes governance and guardrails for developers within the CI/CD pipeline. Automated remediation workflows prioritize and facilitate the resolution of the most critical true positives, eliminating cumbersome cross-team handoffs. This results in faster application roll-outs through the automation of approval workflows and an increase in developer productivity.

4. Informed Decision Making

ASPM solutions provide dashboards and reports tailored for specific teams, such as developers and security professionals, offering insights pertinent to their roles. This clarity enables them to align and make informed decisions regarding risks, vulnerabilities, and application issues. It also facilitates effective coordination among security team members on vulnerability alerts, triage, and policy plans.

5. Continuous Learning and Training

Many ASPM solutions offer training videos and guidelines to address specific CVEs. Both the security and development teams can benefit from these resources, fostering collaboration and ensuring alignment of priorities. This shared knowledge encourages teams to work together towards common security goals and helps equip development teams to more effectively patch security issues.

6. Remediation Efficiency

ASPM can automate manual tasks, such as creating tickets and escalating risks, allowing developers to focus on critical tasks, thus reducing the time required to resolve security issues.

ASPM brings governance throughout the application lifecycle, enabling developers and security teams to work together to burn down the most critical issues in the portfolio. A comprehensive ASPM solution can help organizations realize a complete understanding of risk, respond at scale, and collaborate more effectively.