Build Security Champions with Arnica and Make a Greater Impact on AppSec

We’re thrilled to announce a major launch that takes your AppSec program to the next level. Introducing a new way to identify, nurture, and build Security Champions within your organization that streamlines security workflows like never before.

Arnica developed new Security Champions features to address key challenges organizations face in identifying, engaging, and empowering security champions within their development teams. Traditionally, organizations have struggled to determine who their security champions are and the important metrics behind their work. Many companies rely on manual selection or self-nomination, which often leads to inconsistent and inaccurate identification of security-focused developers  

With these updates, Arnica delivers more of the flexibility, automation, and intelligence you need to scale security effortlessly—while ensuring developers stay productive.

🔥 Security Champions: Identify, Automate, Enable, and Involve

Security champions play a crucial role in secure software development, but identifying and engaging them can be a challenge. 

Security expertise varies across teams, and developers are often focused on speed and functionality over security. Traditional methods rely on self-nomination or manual selection, which can miss key contributors. And maintaining engagement is tough — champions need relevant training, clear incentives, and seamless integration into their workflow.  

➡️  Without behavioral insights, it’s difficult to spot those naturally advocating for security.  

➡️  Without automation, scaling a security champions program becomes time-consuming and inconsistent, limiting its effectiveness across an organization.  

Automating identification and involvement ensures the right people contribute without disrupting development velocity. That’s why Arnica now seamlessly automates the process of identifying and engaging security champions from across your organization.

Arnica identifies and automatically assigns the ideal security champions to each product by analyzing developer behavior. Unlike competitors, Arnica doesn’t just tag committers of code or rely on a superficial classification of security champions. Using a combination of audit logs, commit context, and pull request activity, Arnica is able to identify developers that already display a secure-code mindset and assign them as Security Champions in products where the activity is identified.

Developers who are identified as Security Champions are not over-burdened by the designation. Security engagement is effortless and directly benefits their existing workflow, while also making their expertise more visible across the organization. This can improve career growth opportunities and help them influence security culture.

• ‍Identity Mapping & Behavioral Analysis - Automatically identify security champions based on real developer actions, coding behaviors, and risk management efforts ‍
• Target Risky Development - Detect frequent risk creators to provide targeted security interventions ‍
• Real-time Insights - Leverage real-time insights to enhance security culture without disrupting development ‍
• Developer-Native Workflows - Utilize fast, nimble security workflows to engage with security champions in the tools where they already work including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and in pull requests ‍
• Risk Dismissal Workflow - A developer requests to dismiss a vulnerability, which is then sent for review by security champions or the security team. They evaluate the justification and approve or reject it in real time via ChatOps, ensuring security without blocking development  
• Automate risk mitigation—Automate risk identification, generate context-rich tickets, track mitigations in real time, and close tickets in Jira (or Azure DevOps Boards)
• Seamless Risk Management—Security champions can instantly access relevant vulnerabilities using the risks product command in Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need for complex dashboards. This automation enhances efficiency, allowing security champions to focus on risk mitigation while maintaining developer productivity.

🚀 Get Started Building Security Champions

Arnica built the Security Champions feature to streamline, automate, and scale security engagement across development teams, ensuring that security is a natural and efficient part of the software development lifecycle.  

Are you ready to start building Security Champions at your organization? Contact us to talk to a team member and get started.

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