DevSecOps vs. SRE: How They Intersect
- DevSecOps embeds security practices throughout the software delivery lifecycle—threat modelling, secure coding checks, automated scanning, and runtime protection.
- Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) applies software engineering to operations to keep services reliable, scalable, and observable.
Comparison
| Dimension | DevSecOps | SRE |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Ship secure software continuously | Maintain service availability and performance |
| Core Activities | Secure SDLC, dependency scanning, policy-as-code | SLO management, incident response, automation |
| Lead Stakeholders | Security engineers, platform teams, product squads | Reliability engineers, platform operations, product squads |
| Success Metrics | Vulnerability remediation time, policy compliance, security test coverage | Error-budget burn rate, MTTR/MTTD, change failure rate |
How They Work Together
- Shared Tooling: Integrate security scanners into CI/CD pipelines managed by SRE/platform teams.
- Unified Playbooks: Develop incident response and escalation procedures that cover both security breaches and reliability outages.
- Governance: Use risk reviews to prioritise work that protects both confidentiality/integrity and availability.
Practical Steps
- Align SLOs with security requirements (e.g., patching SLOs, detection SLAs).
- Automate policy enforcement in infrastructure-as-code pipelines to prevent drift.
- Run joint game days that simulate both failure scenarios and security incidents.
Summary
DevSecOps and SRE address different dimensions of software quality, but high-performing organisations blend the two disciplines. Security must be reliable, and reliability must be secure.