As security professionals work to create a secure environment for organizations, developers are often left out of security planning processes but are then tasked with carrying these procedures out. This creates a fractured relationship between development and security. While senior leaders are more focused now on development and security relationships, one in three don’t effectively collaborate or work to strengthen relationships. The relationships between these teams have a major impact on organizations with many benefits, including increased collaboration, more secure applications, increased agility, and continuous compliance. Security teams need to rethink their processes to further embrace the teams they support. VMware commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the relationship between IT, security, and development teams and how organizations are working to ensure a strong security posture via Zero Trust, which is a “never trust, always verify” security model.1 Forrester conducted a survey with 1,475 respondents and five interviews with IT, security, and development managers and above (including CIOs and CISOs) with responsibility for development or security strategy decision-making to explore this topic. We found that, despite efforts, teams continue to struggle with negative relationships and a lack of empathy while often failing to include development teams in security strategy and planning.KEY RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON FINDINGS:› Involve developers in security planning early and often.› Learn to speak the language of the development team rather than asking development to speak security.› Share KPIs and increase communication to improve relationships.› Automate security to improve scalability.