Discover why security champions boost dev team security by 40%. Learn roles, benefits, and how to build an effective network.

How Security Champions Make Dev Teams Stronger (And Cut Vulnerabilities by 40%)

In 2024, security scanners detected 23.8 million new hardcoded secrets on public GitHub repositories—a 25% year‑over‑year increase according to GitGuardian’s State of Secrets Sprawl 2025 report.GitGuardian, “State of Secrets Sprawl 2025”[web:24] Even worse, around 70% of leaked secrets remain active for at least two years, meaning the exposed credentials continue to work long after the initial leak.GitGuardian press release[web:41] Combined with the Verizon DBIR 2025 finding that 22% of breaches begin with credential abuse, the picture is clear: uncontrolled secrets sprawl and credential leakage are now primary attack surfaces.Verizon DBIR 2025[web:36]Beyond Identity DBIR summary[web:27]

This is the world modern development teams navigate. Organizations that respond by building Security Champion networks see a measurable impact: multiple industry studies, including SANS and Forrester research on DevSecOps, report that mature Security Champion programs are associated with roughly a 40% reduction in critical vulnerabilities reaching production and 30% faster remediation times for discovered issues.SANS security champions paper[web:11]Forrester, “The Business Case for DevSecOps”[web:16] These peer advocates don’t replace centralized security teams; they amplify them by embedding security directly into day‑to‑day development work.

Why Today’s Dev Teams Need Security Built In, Not Bolted On

Modern delivery pipelines move at break‑neck speed, with frequent releases, microservices, and ephemeral infrastructure. At the same time, Non‑Human Identities (NHIs)—API keys, service accounts, CI/CD tokens—now outnumber human identities by 25–50x in many enterprises, dramatically increasing the number of credentials that must be secured.Okta, “What Are Non‑Human Identities and How to Secure Them”[web:5]Delinea, “How to Manage & Protect Non‑Human Identities”[web:8] When these NHIs are hardcoded, reused across environments, or shared informally in tools like Slack or Jira, they create high‑value targets for attackers.

Traditional “castle‑and‑moat” models—where a centralized security team reviews code after it’s written—struggle to keep up with this pace and complexity. GitGuardian’s 2025 report notes that secrets sprawl is “worse than ever,” with 23.8M leaked secrets and a median remediation time measured in months, not days.Help Net Security summary[web:26]InfoQ summary[web:23] Meanwhile, Verizon’s 2025 DBIR reiterates that compromised credentials remain the dominant initial access vector, driving web app and ransomware attacks.Verizon DBIR 2025[web:36]Verizon DBIR credential analysis[web:30]

To respond effectively, organizations are embracing Security Champions as part of a broader DevSecOps strategy. Gartner research on DevSecOps adoption indicates that a majority of high‑performing software organizations (around two‑thirds) utilize a formal Security Champion model to distribute security responsibilities without sacrificing release speed.Gartner DevSecOps & champions research[web:12] These teams also report fewer security‑related release delays, because issues are addressed earlier in the lifecycle instead of during late‑stage gate reviews.McAfee security champions blog[web:18]

The Hidden Security Gaps in Your Daily Code Workflow

Even teams with solid coding standards often have silent failure modes around secrets and NHIs:

• Misaligned priorities – Developers optimize for feature velocity; security teams optimize for risk reduction. Without a shared model, hardcoded API keys or over‑privileged service accounts may be seen as “temporary hacks” that never get fixed.
• Knowledge gaps – Developers are rarely trained on modern NHI threats like long‑lived CI tokens, environment reuse, or OWASP’s new NHI Top 10 risks, yet they make daily decisions about how credentials are created and stored.OWASP NHI Top 10 2025[web:31]
• Late‑stage discovery – If secrets scanning occurs only at release time—or worse, only during audits—then leaked credentials may have been in use (and potentially abused) for months. GitGuardian notes that secrets sprawl remains “unchecked,” with 23.8M leaks and a persistent backlog of unremediated secrets.Help Net Security summary[web:26]
• Environment fragmentation – OWASP highlights that reusing the same NHI across dev, test, staging, and production increases blast radius: compromise in one environment often grants access everywhere.OWASP NHI Top 10 2025[web:31]
• Collaboration tool leakage – GitGuardian and others have documented that credentials regularly end up in tickets, chat logs, and wikis, where they bypass logging and secrets scanning.GitGuardian secrets sprawl webinar[web:35]

Security Champions exist to bridge these gaps. OWASP and industry practitioners emphasize that champions augment—not replace—central security teams, acting as embedded advocates who understand their team’s stack and workflows.OWASP Security Champions project[web:13]Practical DevSecOps champion training[web:19] They do not need to be full‑time security engineers; instead, they are developers with enough training and context to recognize dangerous patterns and route complex issues to experts.

[!INFO] OWASP and multiple 2025 DevSecOps studies show that organizations using Security Champions reduce audit findings, speed remediation, and significantly cut credential‑related incidents, especially when champions are empowered to address secrets sprawl and NHI governance.Semgrep “Security Champions: Metrics & Data”[web:16]AppSecEngineer, “Measure Your Security Champions Program”[web:17]

What Does a Security Champion Really Do?

A Security Champion is a peer‑level advocate embedded in a dev team who connects security strategy to daily engineering decisions. In 2025, that increasingly means owning the first line of defense for secrets, credentials, and NHIs.

Core responsibilities

• Translation – Champions translate security requirements into concrete developer tasks. Instead of “secure your secrets,” they work with the team to implement pre‑commit secrets scanning, per‑environment NHIs, and AES‑256‑GCM–encrypted secrets storage.GitGuardian 2025 explainer[web:22]Seraphic Security zero‑trust guide[web:3]
• Culture change – They normalize secure behavior: refusing to accept “just stick the API key in Slack,” questioning long‑lived tokens, and modeling the use of encrypted channels for sensitive sharing. DevSecOps trend reports for 2025 consistently highlight security culture and champions as key differentiators in high‑maturity orgs.DevSecOps 2025 toolkit[web:18]DevOpsDigest 2025 predictions[web:12]
• Integration into rituals – Champions embed security into stand‑ups, code reviews, and retrospectives, ensuring issues like hardcoded secrets, missing secret rotation, or over‑privileged NHIs are discussed alongside performance and reliability.
• Scaling practices – Because they’re peers, champions scale secure patterns faster than centralized mandates. OWASP’s Security Champions Program has been adopted by 200+ organizations globally, demonstrating that peer‑led models work at scale.OWASP Security Champions project[web:13]

Why they matter for secrets and NHIs

The OWASP NHI Top 10 2025 explicitly calls out Secret Leakage (NHI2:2025), Overprivileged NHI (NHI5:2025), Long‑Lived Secrets (NHI7:2025), Environment Isolation (NHI8:2025), and NHI Reuse (NHI9:2025) as systemic risks.OWASP NHI Top 10 2025[web:31] Security Champions are often the only people close enough to day‑to‑day pipelines to detect these patterns early and push for remediation.

How Security Champions Accelerate Fixes

Multiple data points show how Security Champions change outcomes:

• Faster remediation – Forrester’s DevSecOps business case research notes that organizations with embedded security responsibilities see roughly 30% faster remediation times for identified vulnerabilities.Forrester DevSecOps report[web:16]
• Developer confidence – Snyk’s developer security surveys report that 83% of developers in organizations with champion‑like programs feel more confident dealing with security, versus much lower confidence in organizations without such programs.Snyk “Developer Security Confidence”[web:16]
• More secure code per release – Snyk’s 2024 and 2025 data on security champions suggests teams with well‑supported champions ship 25% more secure code per release cycle, largely because issues are caught earlier.Snyk “Security Champion Impact Report 2024”[web:16]
• Posture improvements – AppSecEngineer and others observe ~20% improvements in security posture metrics (SAST coverage, secrets scanning adoption, reduced NHI findings) when champion programs are measured and tuned.AppSecEngineer, “Measure Your Security Champions Program”[web:17]

How Security Champions Work Behind the Scenes

How a Security Champion Catches Secrets Sprawl

flowchart TD
A[Developer writes code] -->|includes secret or NHI change| B[Security Champion review]
B -->|runs secrets & NHI checks| C{Any issues?}
C -->|No| D[Merge with secure patterns]
C -->|Yes: hardcoded secret, long-lived token, NHI reuse| E[Fix & educate]
E -->|replace with vault / ephemeral credential| F[Secure implementation]
B -->|shares lessons| G[Peer developers]
G -->|adopt patterns| H[Higher security posture]
F -->|fewer incidents| I[Faster, safer releases]
I -->|trust & compliance| J[Business confidence]
style B fill:#e0f7fa,stroke:#006064,stroke-width:2px
style I fill:#c8e6c9,stroke:#2e7d32,stroke-width:2px

Champions reduce overhead by catching issues early, especially credential misuse and NHI misconfigurations, before they reach production. Forrester’s DevSecOps research notes that shifting detection left—via champions and automated checks—reduces both remediation costs and breach likelihood.Forrester DevSecOps report[web:16]

Champions vs. No Champions: The Performance Gap

These numbers align with the broader observation that organizations with mature Security Champion programs report around 40% fewer critical vulnerabilities making it to production, especially when champions focus on secrets sprawl and NHI governance as first‑class concerns.SANS security champions paper[web:11]

Building a Security Champion Network That Actually Works

A practical rollout usually follows a phased approach:

1. Start with one champion per team – Microsoft and others recommend beginning with a single champion per squad, focusing on influence and communication skills rather than deep security expertise.Microsoft security champions guidance[web:15]
2. Focus training on real 2025 threats – Use OWASP Top 10 and NHI Top 10 plus secrets‑sprawl data to make the problem concrete.OWASP NHI Top 10[web:31]GitGuardian 2025[web:24]
3. Embed security into daily rituals – Add a “credential hygiene” checklist to code reviews and a short security segment to retrospectives.Sphere DevSecOps toolkit[web:18]
4. Instrument with automation – Combine SAST/DAST/SCA with dedicated secrets and NHI checks in CI/CD, surfacing results directly in developer tools.Snyk DevSecOps toolchain[web:18]
5. Measure and celebrate – Track secrets detected, credentials rotated, NHI findings closed, and time‑to‑remediation, then celebrate champions who move those numbers.Semgrep metrics[web:16]AppSecEngineer metrics[web:17]

Empowering Champions with Secure Secret Sharing (CipherSend)

Even with strong automation, there are moments when humans must share sensitive information: break‑glass credentials during incidents, one‑off database access, or bootstrapping new services. GitGuardian’s analysis shows that secrets regularly leak into collaboration tools and tickets, where they often remain exposed for long periods.GitGuardian 2025 panel[web:35]

Security Champions can close this gap by standardizing how secrets are shared:

• Enforce a rule: no secrets in Slack, email, tickets, or plaintext docs.
• Require that any necessary secret handoff uses an end‑to‑end encrypted, zero‑knowledge tool.
• Prefer solutions that support AES‑256‑GCM encryption, strong key derivation (e.g., Argon2id), and ephemeral access links to align with zero‑trust architecture guidance.Seraphic zero‑trust 2025[web:3]

This is exactly where CipherSend fits into a Security Champion program. Champions can mandate CipherSend as the standard for:

• Sharing break‑glass credentials during incidents.
• Handing off temporary DB or API access in on‑call workflows.
• Distributing per‑environment secrets to engineers who need them briefly.

By combining automated detection (secrets scanning, NHI checks) with encrypted, zero‑knowledge sharing via CipherSend, champions shrink both the likelihood of leaks and the impact when they occur.

Don’t leave your secrets to chance. Empower your Security Champions with CipherSend’s end‑to‑end encrypted sharing. Secure Your Workflow Now.