For more details about the vision for this area of the product, see the Secure stage page.
The Secure team works on GitLab's Secure stage.
The following people are permanent members of the Secure Section:
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Todd Stadelhofer | Director of Engineering, Secure |
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Olivier Gonzalez | Interim Engineering Manager, Secure:Composition Analysis |
| Fabien Catteau | Staff Backend Engineer, Secure:Composition Analysis |
| Tetiana Chupryna | Backend Engineer, Secure:Composition Analysis and Create:Knowledge (intern) |
| Can Eldem | Backend Engineer, Secure:Composition Analysis |
| Mo Khan | Senior Backend Engineer, Secure:Composition Analysis |
| Adam Cohen | Senior Backend Engineer, Secure:Composition Analysis |
| Igor Frenkel | Senior Backend Engineer, Secure:Composition Analysis |
| Person | Role |
|---|
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Seth Berger | Engineering Manager, Secure:Dynamic Analysis |
| Avielle Wolfe | Backend Engineer, Secure |
| Cam Swords | Senior Backend Engineer, Secure:Dynamic Analysis |
| Paula Burke | Senior Backend Engineer, Secure:Dynamic Analysis |
| Person | Role |
|---|
The following members of other functional teams are our stable counterparts:
The Secure Team (previously known as the Security Products Team) is responsible for the security checks features in the GitLab platform, and maps to the secure transversal stage. You can learn more about our approach on the Secure Vision page.
The features provided by the Secure Team are mostly present at the pipeline level, and mostly available as Docker images. This particularity shapes our processes and QA, which differs a bit from the other backend teams.
We still refer to "Security Products" as the tools developed by the Secure Team. Hence the home of our projects in GitLab: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/
SAST (Static Application Security Testing) refers to static code analysis. GitLab leverages the power of various opensource tools to provide a wide range of checks for many languages and support. These tools are wrapped inside docker images which ensure we get a standard output from there. An orchestrator, developed by GitLab, is in charge of running these images, and gathering all the data needed to generate the final report.
DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) is used to hit a live application. Because some vulnerabilities can only be detected once all the code is actually running, this method complements the static code analysis. DAST is relying on OWASP Zed Attach Proxy Project, modified by GitLab to enable authentication.
Dependency Scanning is used to detect vulnerabilities introduced by external dependencies in the application. Because a large portion of the code shipped to production is actually coming from third-party libraries, it's important to monitor them as well. Dependency Scanning is relying mostly on the Gemnasium engine.
Container Scanning is used when the application is shipped as a Docker image. It's very common to build the final image on top of an existing one, which must be checked like every other portion of the application. For that, Container Scanning is relying on the clair scanner.
License Compliance helps with the licenses introduced by third-party libraries in the application. Licence management relies on the LicenceFinder gem.
If you are submitting an issue about a Secure Stage feature, use ~devops::secure and one of the following group labels to get the issue in front of the most appropriate team members.
| Label | Use |
|---|---|
~devops::secure |
All issues related to the Secure Stage |
~group::static analysis |
SAST, Secret Detection |
~group::dynamic analysis |
DAST, IAST, Fuzzing and Security Dashboard related |
~group::software composition analysis |
Container or Dependency Scanning, Vulnerability Database, License Management |
Additional labels should be added according to the Workflow Labels Documentation.
Our release process is specified in this project. The vulnerability database is updated on a regular basis.
Because we have a wide range of domains to cover, it requires a lot of different expertises and skills:
| Technology skills | Areas of interest |
|---|---|
| Ruby on Rails | Backend development |
| Go | SAST, Dependency Scanning |
| SQL (PostgreSQL) | Dependency Scanning |
| Docker | Container Scanning / all |
Our team also must have a good sense of security, with at least basic skills in application security.
We provide tools for many different languages (ex: sast, dependency scanning, license compliance). It means our team is able to understand the basics of each of these languages, including their package managers. We maintain tests projects to ensure our features are working release after release for each of them.
Our release project also defines our QA process.
500 errors on gitlab.com are reported to Sentry. Below are some quick links to pull up Sentry errors related to Secure.
To maximize our velocity and meet our deliverables, we follow a grooming process for all issues.
Meetings schedule:
The Product Manager and the Engineering Manager will do the milestone grooming during their 1:1 following the kickoff. Every issue still open will be evaluated for rescheduling (in the following milestone or not).
Our team occasionally schedules synchronous brainstorming sessions as a method of deep-diving on a specific topic. This approach can be useful in breaking down complexity and deriving actionable steps for problems that lack definition.
We tend to schedule these on a weekly cadence with a rotating timeslot to accomodate team members in different timezones. If a topic is not agreed upon prior to a given week, the slot is canceled to avoid unnecessary meetings. These slots can be viewed on the Secure Stage Team Calendar.
These are purposefully freeform to allow for creativity problem solving. When possible, time should be reserved for a list of actions to be taken from the open discussion.
Brainstorming Sessions Doc (Internal): https://docs.google.com/document/d/179JL5RzbgSIz2XZewbYn79cuX7_vUtte_TcoLwUUC5o/edit#
Examples of previous brainstorming topics:
As the product evolves, it is important to maintain accurate and up to date documentation for our users. If it is not documented, customers may not know a feature exists.
To update the documentation, the following process should be followed:
~Documentation label, outline in the description of the issue what documentation is needed, and assign a Backend Engineer and Technical Writer(TW) to the issue (find the appropriate TW by searching the product categories).~Px label.Since we are a remote company, having daily stand-ups meetings would not make any sense, since we're not all in the same timezone. That's why we have async daily standups, where everyone can give some insights into what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, etc. For that, we rely on the geekbot slack plugin to automate the process.
description in backquote + [link to issue](#)" format when mentioning issues in your standup report.What did you do since yesterday? to denote the current state:
for successfully accomplished tasks (:ci_passing: emoji)
for tasks that were due on some period of time but were not accomplished (:ci_failing: emoji)
for tasks currently in progress (:ci_running: emoji)
for paused or postponed tasks (:ci_pending: emoji):ci_... icon you find applicableExample:
What did you do since yesterday?
Accomplished the Spotbugs java analyzer compareKey is not unique https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/10860 Still working on Allow guests to create an issue from a vulnerability https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/7813 Catch-up on all emails and threads after the vacationOur important meetings are recorded and published on YouTube, in the GitLab Secure Playlist. They give a good overview of the decision process, which is often a discussion with all the stakeholders. As we are a remote company, these video meetings help to synchronize and take decisions faster than commenting on issues. We prefer asynchronous work, but for large features and when the timing is tight, we can detail a lot of specifications. This will make the asynchronous work easier, since we have evaluated all edge cases.
New hires should go through these steps and read the corresponding documentation when onboarding in the Secure Team. Every new hire will have an assigned onboarding issue that will guide them through the whole process.
Secure uses a workflow based on the Product Development Flow.
All open issues that are assigned to a milestone and ready for engineering should have one of the above ~workflow:: labels. The process works as follows:
workflow::scheduling label.
workflow::scheduling means that the issue is complete from a requirements perspective and needs to be groomed.workflow::ready for development should be assigned after an engineer grooms an issue.workflow::In dev should be assigned when an engineer is working on the issue.workflow::In Review should be assigned by the engineer when they open up a MR request and the MR is not WIP.workflow::Verification should be assigned by the engineer after the code has been merged into the code base.If an engineer gets blocked the workflow::blocked label should be applied, and the engineer should @mention the PM and EM regarding the issue and anyone else that can help resolve the block.
milestone filter with the current milestone +1 (the current milestone is already released).