May 8, 2024 at 10:06AM
Security teams and SREs share common priorities including access controls, network design, observability, releases, incident response, and eliminating toil. They also have differences such as error budgets, measuring challenges, and compliance. To optimize organizational efficiency, collaboration, respect, and choosing each other’s priorities are key to leveraging their shared interests and strengths.
Based on the meeting notes, the key takeaways for optimizing the collaboration between security teams and site reliability engineers (SREs) are as follows:
1. Common Priorities: Both teams share a significant overlap in their goals and responsibilities, such as access controls, network design, observability, releases, release engineering, incident response, and eliminating toil.
2. Differences: While there are some differences in areas like error budget, measuring, and compliance, the common priorities far outweigh these differences.
3. Collaboration Strategies: To promote effective collaboration, it’s essential to foster respect for individual and organizational differences, elevate each other’s work, and prioritize joint projects that benefit both teams. Additionally, emphasizing the importance of choosing to work closely with chief information security officers (CISOs) can also significantly enhance collaboration.
Overall, realizing the potential of working together more effectively can greatly enhance the productivity and experiences of both teams, ultimately benefiting the organization.