A security bottleneck is the point in a software pipeline where security review, testing, or approval cannot keep up with development output. The code may be produced quickly, but human review, vulnerability triage, dependency checks, and release decisions take longer, so work piles up behind security controls.
This matters because attackers benefit when defenses fall behind fast-moving change. If reviews are delayed, insecure dependencies, weak configurations, or risky code can slip into production before anyone notices. Defenders reduce the bottleneck by automating routine scanning, using policy checks in CI/CD, prioritizing high-risk findings, and reserving human attention for exceptions and release decisions. In practice, the goal is not to remove security review, but to scale it so it protects delivery without becoming the thing that stops it.