Rethinking developer education to supercharge security

How agile learning with Secure Code Warrior reduces vulnerabilities

Security education needs to evolve 

One of the challenges facing security teams today is there is not enough time to integrate secure coding earlier in the development cycle. Security leaders also need to rethink the value developers are getting from the secure code learning experience, how to make the program more engaging and, most importantly, more impactful. The last thing you want is for your security education program to be seen as a hindrance to productivity. The goal of approaching developer security training should instead be built on engaging pathways, integrations with workflows, and a breadth of content that helps the concepts to stick, resulting in a reduction of the vulnerabilities being introduced. 

By integrating secure code learning with your developers’ workflow and reducing the burden on their time, developers can see a big boost in their ability to code more securely and be more productive. Secure Code Warrior has looked at data from over 75,000 developers using our platform and found that agile learning helps developers introduce 53% fewer vulnerabilities into the codebase. 

This requires a shift in approach so that developers get excited about the subject through more hands-on learning and integrations with their tools and environment to drive deeper engagement and moments of micro-learning with a big impact. 

According to Derek Fisher, a leader in application security, “We’re all pretty well familiar with the annual compliance training that we’re all subjected to in any organization. It’s usually what I call ‘death by Powerpoint’, a bunch of slides and maybe an assessment at the end...  just really ineffective and time-consuming. We had training, but it was the usual compliance based with some specific-to-security training that was slide/audio recording based. We noticed that developers weren’t very engaged and learning from the materials, so we had to shift our strategy.”

Integrate the learning experience with your developer workflows

Secure Code Warrior’s platform delivers just-in-time microburst content into the developer’s daily workflow. This integration with security tools is designed to eliminate context-switching and enable AppSec teams to build more prescriptive and engaging programs. 

With these devtool and security integrations, you can measure how your secure code learning program is working by tracking developers’ progress and measuring response times to tickets, as well as observing the reduction of vulnerabilities over time through IAST/ DAST/SAST tools. 

Here are three key ways Secure Code Warrior can integrate with your tools and workflows to help reduce vulnerabilities by up to 53% 

1. Streamline your approach 

Integrate Secure Code Warrior with your scan and pen-testing tools. This allows you to automatically correlate specific vulnerabilities and expose developers to trusted learning content needed for remediation. Secure Code Warrior has integrations with Synopsys, Snyk, Bugcrowd, Fortify, Contrast, and many more to help keep your program laser-focused. 

2. Improve productivity

Enable development teams to learn by doing through hands-on Challenges, Coding Labs, and Guidelines embedded in Jira, Gitlab, GitHub, and Azure Boards. Learning happens in minutes, not hours, without hampering developer productivity or disrupting their flow. 

2. Scale your program 

Reduce the admin burden for a security program with SCORM and SCIM capabilities built for the enterprise. Easily integrate Secure Code Warrior with your LMS, and manage user provisioning automatically. Enable SSO with the Okta integration. 

Reduce 53% of vulnerabilities earlier in the SDLC 

It’s possible to remediate vulnerabilities much earlier in the SDLC by shifting focus to writing more secure code from the start when it costs significantly less to fix them. By looking at the source of many vulnerabilities, namely, insecure code being shipped into production by developers, reducing the vulnerabilities introduced can help alleviate your tech debt and strengthen security. 

Meaningfully reducing vulnerabilities through developer education doesn't happen through boring, static training that disrupts the developers' flow. By embedding learning from the most flexible agile learning platform on the market with your tools, your existing investments in security and devtools become more valuable, potentially resulting in a substantial 53% reduction in vulnerabilities. 

Learn more tips from Secure Code Warrior 

In our next blog post, we’ll explore how you can build a highly engaging program that ties everything back to risk reduction, allowing you to focus on what the material impact is for a successful secure coding program.

Secure Code Warrior is here for your organization to help you securely code across the entire software development lifecycle and create a culture in which cybersecurity is top of mind. Whether you’re an AppSec Manager, Developer, CISO, or anyone involved in security, we can help your organization reduce risks associated with insecure code.