The "Fix everything High/Critical in 30 days" policy is a standard in the industry, but in practice, this blanket approach often creates friction between security teams and developers.

When Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are rigid and disconnected from the reality of engineering cycles, they become "Zombie Tickets"—issues that stay open forever, ignored until an audit forces a panic. To improve remediation rates and developer workflows, you need SLAs that are dynamic, centralized, and automated.

Here is how you can move from "paper compliance" to active risk reduction using DefectDojo.

The Problem: The "30-Day" Trap

Most organizations inherit their SLAs from compliance frameworks (PCI-DSS, SOC2) without adjusting for their actual engineering capacity. The result is a typical workflow bottleneck:

• Alert Fatigue: Security tools scream "Critical!" for hundreds of issues across different scanners.
• Context Switching: Developers are interrupted constantly without knowing which fire is actually burning the house down.
• Prioritization Paralysis: When everything is marked as a priority, nothing is prioritized.

To fix this, you need a platform that acts as a central referee, normalizing data so your SLAs actually mean something.

Why DefectDojo is Your SLA "Source of Truth"

In a fragmented ecosystem where Snyk, Checkov, and SonarQube all have their own definitions of "High Severity," you need a centralized judge. DefectDojo ingests findings from over 200+ tools and normalizes them, allowing you to apply a single, unified SLA policy across your entire stack.

1. Normalization Before Policy

Before you set a deadline, you must agree on the severity. DefectDojo takes the raw data from your scanners and applies a consistent severity scale. This ensures that a "High" in your container scanner is treated with the same urgency as a "High" in your DAST tool, creating a sense of fairness that developers respect.

2. Dynamic SLA Configuration

DefectDojo allows you to define granular SLA configurations that go beyond simple severity. You can customize timelines based on:

• Finding Criticality: Set 7 days for Critical, 30 for High, and 90 for Medium.
• System Exposure: Apply stricter SLAs to internet-facing assets vs. internal sandboxes.

Pro Tip: Use DefectDojo’s "SLA Breaches" filter to instantly generate a list of vulnerabilities that have effectively "expired," allowing you to prioritize these for your next sprint.

How to Fix the "Developer Experience" (DevX)

An SLA is useless if it lives in a PDF on a SharePoint site. To work, it must live where the developers live. DefectDojo bridges this gap effectively.

The "Ticking Clock" in Jira

When DefectDojo pushes a finding to Jira (or GitHub Issues), it doesn't just dump the data. It enables you to sync the remediation deadline. This transforms a security vulnerability into a standard engineering task with a clear due date.

This clarity empowers developers to plan their sprints. Instead of a vague "fix this soon," they see "This must be closed by Thursday to meet SLA."

Handling Exceptions Gracefully

Sometimes, a fix isn't possible within 30 days. Maybe it requires a major architectural refactor, or the risk is a false positive in your specific context. The fear of "SLA Breach" often forces devs to close tickets without properly fixing them.

DefectDojo solves this with built-in Risk Acceptance workflows. Developers can request an exception with a reason and expiration date. Security teams can approve or deny it directly in the platform. This keeps the SLA "green" while maintaining a transparent audit trail of why the risk remains.

Moving from MTTR to SLA Compliance Rate

Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR) is a useful metric, but it can be skewed by outliers. A better metric for the health of your program is SLA Compliance Rate.

DefectDojo’s dashboard visualizes this data instantly:

• "What % of Critical vulnerabilities were closed within 7 days?"
• "Which product teams are consistently hitting their SLAs?"

This gamifies security. You can show engineering leads exactly how their teams compare to the organizational average, driving competitive improvement rather than punitive shaming.

Conclusion: Operationalizing Your Policy

Writing a policy is easy. Enforcing it at scale is hard. By using DefectDojo as the central nervous system for your vulnerability management:

1. You normalize risk across all tools.
2. You automate the tracking of due dates.
3. You integrate deadlines directly into the developer's backlog.

Don't just write SLAs. Operationalize them. Let DefectDojo handle the math so your developers can handle the code.