A security champions program embeds security-focused developers within each development team to serve as the bridge between central security teams and engineering organizations. Security champions are developers who maintain their engineering role while taking on additional responsibility for promoting secure development practices, triaging security findings, and escalating complex security decisions to dedicated security teams.
Organizations identify motivated developers with security interest from each development team and provide them with specialized training -- secure coding, threat modeling, vulnerability assessment, and security tool usage. Champions receive ongoing education through regular meetings, capture-the-flag exercises, conference attendance, and access to security team resources. Within their teams, champions conduct initial security reviews of new features, triage SAST and SCA findings to separate actionable vulnerabilities from false positives, facilitate threat modeling sessions for significant architectural changes, and serve as the first point of contact for security questions. Champions participate in a cross-team community of practice that shares knowledge, discusses emerging threats, and develops team-specific security guidance. Central security teams support champions with escalation paths for complex findings, tooling access, and recognition programs. Metrics track champion engagement, security finding resolution rates, and the security posture improvements in champion-supported teams versus others.
Security teams are perpetually outnumbered by development teams, creating a bottleneck that slows both development and security. A security team of 5 cannot meaningfully review code from 200 developers. Security champions multiply security capacity by embedding security awareness and basic security skills across the organization. They resolve routine security issues locally, reducing the burden on central security teams and enabling faster development cycles. Champions also improve security culture by making security a shared responsibility rather than an external mandate.
CDA builds security champions programs through RGA domain operations. Theater missions design program structure, develop champion training curricula mapped to organizational technology stacks, establish community of practice formats, and implement metrics that demonstrate the force-multiplying effect of embedded security champions.