DevSecOps is Not a Department: 5 Steps to Building a Culture of Shared Security Responsibility

Published: 21 November 2025

For years, many organizations have tried to “do DevSecOps” by simply creating a new team, buying a new set of tools, or renaming the existing security department. This approach is destined to fail. The result is rarely a seamless integration of security into the development lifecycle, but rather the same old friction, now with a trendier name. Security remains a silo, a final gatekeeper, and an adversarial force that slows down development velocity. The fundamental misunderstanding is this: DevSecOps is not a department you can create. It is not a tool you can buy. It is a culture of shared responsibility that you must build.

A true DevSecOps culture is one where security is no longer the sole responsibility of a small team of specialists, but a collective, proactive effort embraced by everyone involved in building and delivering software—developers, operations, and security alike. It’s about breaking down the silos that have traditionally separated these teams and weaving security into the very fabric of the CI/CD pipeline. Shifting from a siloed security model to a culture of shared responsibility is a significant organizational change, but it is the only way to deliver secure software at the speed that modern business demands. Here are five practical steps to get you there.

1. Integrate Automated Security Tooling into the CI/CD Pipeline

The foundation of a shared responsibility model is empowering developers with the tools to find and fix security issues early and often. Security can no longer be a manual, after-the-fact review. It must be an automated, integral part of the developer’s daily workflow.

• Static and Dynamic Analysis (SAST/DAST): Integrate automated tools that scan your code for vulnerabilities every time a developer commits a change. The results should be delivered directly in the developer’s environment (e.g., as a comment in a pull request), providing immediate, actionable feedback.
• Software Composition Analysis (SCA): Automate the scanning of your open-source dependencies for known vulnerabilities. This is critical in an age where most applications are built on a foundation of third-party libraries.

2. Establish Shared Metrics and Goals

You get what you measure. If your development teams are measured solely on feature velocity and your security team is measured solely on the number of vulnerabilities found, their goals are inherently in conflict. To break down silos, you must create shared goals that align the incentives of all teams.

• Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR): Instead of just tracking the number of open vulnerabilities, track how long it takes to fix them. This becomes a shared metric that both development and security teams are responsible for improving.
• Vulnerability Escape Rate: Measure the number of security defects that are found in production versus those caught by automated tooling in the pipeline. The goal for the entire organization is to drive this number down.

3. Implement a Security Champions Program

You cannot embed a security expert in every single development team. A security champions program is a powerful way to scale your security expertise. A champion is a developer or engineer on a team who has a particular interest in security. They are not security experts, but they are given extra training, resources, and a direct line to the central security team.

• Act as a Bridge: The champion acts as the “security conscience” for their team. They are the first point of contact for security-related questions and help to translate security requirements into a language that developers understand.
• Disseminate Knowledge: They help to disseminate security best practices within their team and bring feedback and real-world development challenges back to the central security team, creating a vital feedback loop.

4. Invest in Continuous Security Education

Developers cannot be held responsible for security if they are not given the training they need to write secure code. Education must be an ongoing, practical, and context-aware process, not a one-time, generic annual training.

• Role-Specific Training: Provide training that is relevant to your specific technology stack and the types of vulnerabilities your teams are most likely to introduce.
• Gamified Learning and “Capture the Flag” Events: Make learning fun and engaging. Internal hacking events where developers learn to think like an attacker can be an incredibly effective way to build security awareness.

5. Shift the Security Team’s Role from Gatekeeper to Enabler

In a mature DevSecOps culture, the role of the central security team undergoes a profound transformation. They are no longer the team that says “no” at the end of the process. Instead, they become a team of expert consultants and tool builders who enable the development teams to move faster, safely.

• Building the “Paved Road”: The security team’s primary job is to build a secure, easy-to-use “paved road”—a set of pre-approved, hardened libraries, base container images, and CI/CD pipeline templates that make it easy for developers to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing.
• Expert Consultants: They act as a center of excellence, providing expert guidance on complex security challenges like threat modeling for new services or designing secure authentication systems.

Building a culture of shared security responsibility is a journey, not a destination. It requires a long-term commitment from leadership and a willingness to break down long-standing organizational barriers. The result, however, is a powerful competitive advantage: the ability to innovate at high velocity, without compromising on security.

At Aqon, we help organizations navigate this cultural transformation. We provide the expertise to build secure CI/CD pipelines, implement the right tooling, and establish the practices that foster a true culture of DevSecOps.

Ready to move beyond a siloed security department? Contact us today to learn how we can help you build a culture of shared security responsibility.

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