There’s a quiet truth in most software orgs: security teams are outnumbered and developers aren’t typically incentivized to care deeply about security unless it blocks a release.

Security scanners flood dashboards with hundreds of alerts and tickets. The vast majority are at least perceived as noise by dev teams. Even the real vulnerabilities are often met with resistance; “Is this actually exploitable?” or “Applying this upgrade will break the build.” 

Politically astute AppSec people filter down to only the most critical and choose diplomacy over blunt force. (E.g. security reviews, security champions programs) This seems incrementally more effective, but these teams are still spending a ton of time only to settle for compromise- almost always less than meeting their own objectives. 

And the problem compounds. Dependencies change constantly. Code moves fast. Most teams don’t have the time, visibility, or appetite to untangle whether the latest GitHub advisory for a sub-sub-dependency is actually relevant.

The result?

• Backlogs of unresolved security tickets
• Delays caused by unclear or untrusted remediation guidance
• Frustration between teams who all want to do the right thing, but can’t find a fast, reliable path there

Security teams are stuck in a tough spot: they’re held accountable for risk, but rarely have the authority to take action directly. Developers, meanwhile, are the ones tasked with fixing issues-- 62% of dev teams are primarily responsible for vulnerability remediation, according to Gartner. But they often lack the context or tooling to do it quickly and safely.

It feels a bit like taxation without representation: security teams carry the burden but don’t get a vote. Even when they are willing and able to own remediation, there’s typically not enough trust and empowerment from dev team leaders.

So what’s the way forward?

There are really only two sustainable paths:

• Make it easy for developers to remediate, or
• Take remediation off their plate entirely.

Let’s focus on the first one.

“Make it easy” isn’t about putting it in the backlog or pasting CVE links into a ticket. It means reducing friction between people, process, and technology.

• People need clear ownership, context, and trust. The more fragmented security and engineering are, the harder that becomes. A shared understanding of what’s actually at risk and what “good enough” looks like is key.
• Process needs to reflect the way developers already work. If the path to remediation involves tooling nobody touches, or workflows outside of Git, it’s going to stall. The easier it is to review, test, and merge a fix, the faster it ships.
• Technology has to do the heavy lifting. Automatic patching, regression testing, and minimal-diff PRs are no longer nice to have-- they’re required if you want devs to stay in flow and security to scale without bottlenecks.

And when that’s still not enough; when priorities conflict or the window to fix is short, security should be able to act directly. But only if they’ve earned the trust to do it.

At Seal Security, we specialize in removing the friction between development and security teams. Our open source remediation platform integrates directly into existing developer workflows, generating minimal-diff pull requests that are safe to merge and rigorously tested for compatibility and efficacy. By bridging the gap between detection and action, Seal helps teams resolve security issues faster, reduce backlog fatigue, and build trust between AppSec and engineering. Whether you want to empower developers with seamless fixes or take remediation off their plate entirely, Seal provides the tools to make secure development scalable and sustainable.

Stop choosing between speed and security. Discover how Seal Security helps teams stay secure without slowing development.