Product and infrastructure engineering teams are not always aligned with the interests of security engineering teams. While product and infrastructure focus on driving business value and delivering practical solutions, security focuses on detection, prevention, and remediation, which can seem less immediately valuable. Like an insurance policy, it’s not entirely obvious why it’s worth the money or effort when there hasn’t been an incident yet.
Instead of the traditional cycle of identifying vulnerabilities, applying remediation, and following up through case management, I’ve found it much more effective to advocate for security solutions that also deliver business value. For example, using OAuth and IAM-based access instead of static keys and encryption instead of more granular access control can significantly simplify infrastructure, reduce complexity, and lessen the operational burden, making them very appealing to both product and platform engineering teams.
