Strained Relationships Hinder DevSecOps Innovation

Security is still seen as a barrier in organizations, as evidenced in a new study that finds 52% of developers think security policies stifle innovation.

The data comes from research conducted by Forrester and commissioned by VMware. Researchers surveyed 1,475 IT and security leaders to find only 22% of developers "strongly agree" that they understand which security policies they are expected to comply with.

With the adoption of cloud and other related technologies, security challenges tied to cloud and containers are a pressing concern, according to the survey. Survey respondents noted their top two most challenging tasks are ensuring security in the cloud (78.6%) and securing workloads and containers (70.5%).

Respondents feel there has been progress when it comes to relationships between developers and security teams, as 73% agreed their senior leadership focuses more on strengthening the relationship than they did two years ago. But relationships are still strained, as 37% say their organizations' teams are not effectively collaborating or taking strides to strengthen relationships between security and development teams.

"Our research shows that security needs a perception shift," says Rick McElroy, principal cybersecurity strategist of VMware, in a release on the findings. "Rather than be seen as the team that only swoops in to fix breaches and leaks, or who 'gets in the way' of innovation, security should be embedded across people, processes, and technologies."

More than half (53%) of respondents expect security and development teams to be unified within three years, and 42% expect security to become more embedded in the development process in that same period. There is a broader acknowledgment that cross-team alignment empowers businesses to reduce team silos (71%), create more secure applications (70%), and increase agility to adopt new workflows and technologies (66%).

The full study can be downloaded here.