The strategic value of a Security Champions Program.

Implementing a Security Champions Program at your organization offers a strategic advantage in improving the security posture.

What is a Security Champion?

Some teams are not even sure what a security champion does to advocate for dev teams. A Security Champion helps to bridge the gap between technical security teams and other development teams, facilitating better communication and collaboration.

What can a Security Champion Program provide?

In essence, a Security Champion program not only mitigates risks but also cultivates a security-first mindset. This security-first mindset is an integral part of proactive steps towards safeguarding sensitive data and maintaining business continuity in all dev environments.

Developers and engineers are at the cutting edge of technology and constantly testing new software techniques. The collaboration between teams can reduce response times to emerging threats.

Embedding security knowledge within different teams decentralizes expertise, helping to address security concerns swiftly and reducing the bottleneck effect.

Involving different teams helps to instill a sense of ownership and responsibility. The empowered teammates leads to more security-conscious development practices and strengthens the organization’s defenses.

Here are some open-source resources building a Security Champion Program:
1) OWASP Security Champions: https://owasp.org/www-project-security-champions-guidebook/.

2) Dustin Lehr’s Security Champion Success Guide: https://securitychampionsuccessguide.org/.

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