We recently sat down with Dimitri Vanderhaeghe, Software Engineer at Selligent Marketing Cloud, a highly integrated, AI-powered omnichannel marketing automation platform that enables ambitious B2C marketers to maximize every moment of interaction with today’s connected consumers.  For Selligent, a fast-paced B2C technology company scaling up and meeting the growing demands of their market is vital. Part of being able to meet these demands is an emphasis on cybersecurity and most crucially a developer-led, security skills program. 

Why is cybersecurity vital for scaling your business? 

A strong security strategy has to be high on your company's agenda if you want to scale your business, otherwise you leave yourselves open to vulnerabilities. A cybersecurity attack takes place every 39 seconds, and the cost of an attack on your business can be financially detrimental and ruin your reputation. We only have to look to the Equifax hack in 2017 for a prime example as their CEO resigned and made it clear that the hack was the reason for doing so. 

However, cybersecurity has to become a shared responsibility in order to scale, in particular within your developer community as Dimitri explains:

"The most important reason to train engineers is scalability, because we have a big product that almost 60 engineers are working on. If they don't care about security, all the vulnerability scans come back to the security specialists."

How do you create a developer-led security culture?

Dimitri and the Selligent team seem to have cracked a developer-led security culture, but from our recent research only 15% of developers see security as everyone’s responsibility within their organization. So, how do you start left and create a developer-led security culture?

Dimitri attributes this to an increase in security awareness generated through Secure Code Warrior® 's learning platform to upskill their developers. Dimitri says that without the platform they would have struggled to create security awareness. As a result, security is at the forefront of the developers’ minds when producing code. 

Another key aspect to creating a developer-led security culture is to make training relevant. Our recent study also showed that 40% of developers say that training is not hands-on and 30% say it’s also not relevant Dimitri notes that the granularity and real-world nature of Secure Code Warrior® tournaments make all the difference. The fun and competitive nature of the platform also leads to more engaged and aware developers. 

As Dimitri points out, without awareness the burden of cybersecurity falls back to the security specialists, which simply is not scalable. The answer is to scale your business and products effectively to ensure you’re protected against software vulnerabilities by focusing on hyper-relevant contextual training of your developer community with a developer-led security skills program. 

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Secure Code Warrior can offer your organization just that. Interested in a demo? Book one below. 

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