20 Expert-Backed Ways to Actually Make DevSecOps Work in Regulated Industries
DevSecOps isn’t just a buzzword anymore especially in tightly regulated industries like healthcare and finance, where the cost of skipping security is measured in fines, lawsuits and lost trust. But integrating security into development and operations isn’t just hard, it’s political, technical and cultural. And when the compliance bar is high, things get messy fast.
These 20 industry experts cut through the noise with advice rooted in real implementation. Think of it less like a checklist and more like the mindset shift required to build fast without breaking trust.
1. Make Compliance Invisible
Bake it into your CI/CD pipelines, version control, code reviews. Automate audit trails. Make it part of the developer’s environment instead of a checklist they ignore. Compliance should run in the background, not sit on a clipboard.
2. Don’t Let AI Run Wild
AI is moving faster than your governance. Write policies now that define how AI-generated code gets reviewed, what data it can see and how its decisions are monitored. Avoid becoming a cautionary tale.
3. Give Developers What They Need Upfront
Security often hits after the fact too late. Shift tools and static analysis earlier into the development process. Let devs fix issues at commit time, not three weeks later under pressure.
4. Start With Machine Identity
Humans aren’t the only identities in your system. Machines talk to machines constantly. If you’re not securing service accounts, APIs and internal comms, you’ve left a huge attack surface open.
5. Automate Your Standards
Instead of writing a policy and hoping it’s followed, codify it. Turn it into rules your pipeline enforces. That’s what lets you move fast without constant reapproval overhead.
6. Use Policy-As-Code From Day One
Set policies as code, not Word docs. Frameworks like OPA or Sentinel make your rules enforceable and testable. Audit becomes part of deployment, not a fire drill.
7. Culture > Controls
It’s not just tooling. Teach teams to think like security pros. Build a habit of asking “what could go wrong?” at the whiteboard stage, not just after an incident report.
8. Build for the Long Haul
Don’t duct tape compliance onto a pipeline and call it done. Plan for scale. Think about evidence, traceability and alerting from day one. That’s how you ship secure software without slowing down.
9. Treat Your Database Like a Critical Asset
It’s where your risk lives. Focus on access controls, encryption, data masking and logging. If your database is a free-for-all, nothing else you do will matter.
10. Solve the Root Cause, Not the Symptoms
Security tickets aren’t the problem, they’re the result. Trace vulnerabilities back to teams, habits and architecture flaws. Fix that.
11. Values Drive Execution
Regulated environments don’t succeed on rules alone. A values-driven team that believes in security will write better code than one chasing compliance metrics.
12. Start With Leadership
Security needs a champion at the top. If your C-suite doesn’t talk about it, neither will your teams. Make it a leadership OKR.
13. Don’t Hire Generic CISOs
You need someone who gets code, cloud, compliance, people and risk. A one-dimensional security hire won’t cut it. Invest accordingly.
14. Train Devs To Think Like Security Engineers
Patchwork fixes are expensive. Teaching devs to prevent vulnerabilities as they code is the cheapest and fastest long-term fix.
15. Cross-Team Work Isn't Optional
DevSecOps isn’t a tool it’s three groups learning to speak the same language. If your dev, ops and sec teams don’t trust each other, no pipeline will fix it.
16. Balance the Focus
Don’t let security dominate dev or ops, or vice versa. Every team has its strengths, the trick is building processes that let each do what they’re best at without stepping on toes.
17. Build Trust, Not Silos
DevSecOps fails when teams negotiate instead of collaborate. Create shared incentives and shared language. You’re either aligned early, or fighting later.
18. Keep AI Grounded in Human Oversight
AI speeds everything up, but accountability still lives with people. In regulated spaces, models don’t get to make final calls without someone real reviewing them.
19. Zero Trust Isn’t a Buzzword Here
Assume every system is compromised until proven otherwise. Automate verifications. Cut default access. Compliance doesn’t matter if your core isn’t secure.
20. Lock Down Non-Human Access First
Your services and containers often have more access than your people. Secure them like critical users. Automate credential rotation, enforce least privilege and monitor them continuously.