Source: securityboulevard.com – Author: Dan Kaplan
2) Build Golden Paths — and Treat Them Like Products
The last thing developers likely want is more checklists. They need tools that make secure choices the easiest choices. That’s the purpose of golden paths — pre-built templates, pipelines, and architecture patterns that bake in secure defaults.
Golden paths should be:
- Versioned, documented, and maintained with changelogs.
- Designed for usability, not just compliance.
- Flexible enough to handle real-world edge cases.
- Regularly updated to address emerging threats.
Done well, golden paths eliminate the need for manual reviews, reduce one-off tickets, and allow engineers to focus on shipping.
Implementation tip: Assign product owners to your golden paths who are accountable for adoption metrics, user feedback, and continuous improvement.
3) Tighten the Feedback Loop Between Action and Consequence
Feedback loses value as time passes. If a security issue surfaces days or weeks after a deployment, the connection to the original decision fades. Fixes become backlog items, and ownership becomes unclear.
To avoid this, security feedback should be immediate and context-aware, landing where the issue originated:
- Inline feedback in PRs.
- Automated checks in CI/CD.
- Specific remediation guidance, not just severity scores.
- Visible security performance metrics for teams.
Engineers can act on issues quickly, without needing a full threat model to understand the impact.
Implementation tip: Implement pre-commit hooks and IDE plugins that catch security issues before code is even pushed, with clear guidance on how to fix them.
4) Normalize Shared Retrospectives for Incidents and Near-Misses
Most companies treat outages and security events as separate tracks, but they often have the same root causes: poorly maintained automation, unclear ownership, or excessive permissions.
Effective retrospectives should:
- Focus on systemic gaps, not individual mistakes.
- Identify where better observability or clearer policy would have helped.
- Create actionable follow-ups for both teams, not just lessons learned.
- Examine near-misses, not just full breaches.
These reviews build a shared understanding of failure modes, reducing the risk of repeat issues.
Implementation tip: Create a joint incident response runbook that brings DevOps and security together from the first alert, rather than working in silos.
5) Use Metrics That Drive Cross-Team Behavior
Teams optimize for what they measure. If DevOps is judged on speed and uptime, and security on closed vulnerabilities, collaboration will always be a second priority.
Instead, define shared metrics that reflect mutual goals:
- % of services deployed via secure golden paths.
- Mean time to remediate critical issues.
- % of workloads with verified least-privilege access.
- Time to revoke unused or dormant access.
- Technical debt reduction velocity.
Shared KPIs drive alignment at the leadership level and create clarity for individual teams.
Implementation tip: Include these metrics in leadership dashboards, and review them in joint forums that include both technical and business stakeholders.
6) Use Non-Human IAM as a Bridge Between Teams
Original Post URL: https://securityboulevard.com/2025/05/how-to-unite-developers-devops-and-security-without-slowing-down/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-unite-developers-devops-and-security-without-slowing-down
Category & Tags: DevOps,Security Bloggers Network,Automation,Best Practices,CI-CD,DEVOPS,identities,Secrets,workloads – DevOps,Security Bloggers Network,Automation,Best Practices,CI-CD,DEVOPS,identities,Secrets,workloads
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