Compliance report (ULTIMATE)

Compliance report gives you the ability to see a group's merge request activity. It provides a high-level view for all projects in the group. For example, code approved for merging into production.

You can use the report to get:

  • A list of compliance violations from all merged merge requests within the group.
  • The reason and severity of each compliance violation.
  • A link to the merge request that caused each compliance violation.

View the compliance report for a group

Prerequisites:

  • You must be an administrator or have the Owner role for the group.

To view the compliance report:

  1. On the top bar, select Main menu > Groups and find your group.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Security & Compliance > Compliance report.

Severity levels scale

The following is a list of available violation severity levels, ranked from most to least severe:

Icon Severity level
{severity-critical, 18, gl-fill-red-800} Critical
{severity-high, 18, gl-fill-red-600} High
{severity-medium, 18, gl-fill-orange-400} Medium
{severity-low, 18, gl-fill-orange-300} Low
{severity-info, 18, gl-fill-blue-400} Info

Violation types

The following is a list of violations that are either:

  • Already available.
  • Aren't available, but which we are tracking in issues.
Violation Severity level Category Description Availability
Author approved merge request High Separation of duties The author of the merge request approved their own merge request. Learn more. Available in GitLab 14.10
Committers approved merge request High Separation of duties The committers of the merge request approved the merge request they contributed to. Learn more. Available in GitLab 14.10
Fewer than two approvals High Separation of duties The merge request was merged with fewer than two approvals. Learn more. Available in GitLab 14.10
Pipeline failed Medium Pipeline results The merge requests pipeline failed and was merged. Unavailable
Pipeline passed with warnings Info Pipeline results The merge request pipeline passed with warnings and was merged. Unavailable
Code coverage down more than 10% High Code coverage The code coverage report for the merge request indicates a reduction in coverage of more than 10%. Unavailable
Code coverage down between 5% to 10% Medium Code coverage The code coverage report for the merge request indicates a reduction in coverage of between 5% to 10%. Unavailable
Code coverage down between 1% to 5% Low Code coverage The code coverage report for the merge request indicates a reduction in coverage of between 1% to 5%. Unavailable
Code coverage down less than 1% Info Code coverage The code coverage report for the merge request indicates a reduction in coverage of less than 1%. Unavailable

Merge request drawer

Introduced in GitLab 14.1.

When you select a row, a drawer is shown that provides further details about the merge request:

  • Project name and compliance framework label, if the project has one assigned.
  • Link to the merge request.
  • The merge request's branch path in the format [source] into [target].
  • A list of users that committed changes to the merge request.
  • A list of users that commented on the merge request.
  • A list of users that approved the merge request.
  • The user that merged the merge request.

Separation of duties

We support a separation of duties policy between users who create and approve merge requests. Our criteria for the separation of duties is as follows:

Chain of Custody report

  • Introduced in GitLab 13.3.
  • Chain of Custody reports sent using email introduced in GitLab 15.3 with a flag named async_chain_of_custody_report. Disabled by default.

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default sending Chain of Custody reports through email is not available. To make it available, ask an administrator to enable the feature flag named async_chain_of_custody_report. On GitLab.com, this feature is not available.

The Chain of Custody report allows customers to export a list of merge commits within the group. The data provides a comprehensive view with respect to merge commits. It includes the merge commit SHA, merge request author, merge request ID, merge user, date merged, pipeline ID, group name, project name, and merge request approvers. Depending on the merge strategy, the merge commit SHA can be a merge commit, squash commit, or a diff head commit.

To generate the Chain of Custody report:

  1. On the top bar, select Main menu > Groups and find your group.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Security & Compliance > Compliance report.
  3. Select List of all merge commits.

The Chain of Custody report is either:

  • Available for download.
  • Sent through email. Requires GitLab 15.3 and later with async_chain_of_custody_report feature flag enabled.

Commit-specific Chain of Custody report

Introduced in GitLab 13.6.

Authenticated group owners can generate a commit-specific Chain of Custody report for a given commit SHA, either:

  • Using the GitLab UI:

    1. On the top bar, select Main menu > Groups and find your group.
    2. On the left sidebar, select Security & Compliance > Compliance report.
    3. At the top of the compliance report, to the right of List of all merge commits, select the down arrow ({chevron-lg-down}).
    4. Enter the merge commit SHA, and then select Export commit custody report. SHA and then select Export commit custody report.

The Chain of Custody report is either:

  • Available for download.

  • Sent through email. Requires GitLab 15.3 and later with async_chain_of_custody_report feature flag enabled.

  • Using a direct link: https://gitlab.com/groups/<group-name>/-/security/merge_commit_reports.csv?commit_sha={optional_commit_sha}, passing in an optional value to the commit_sha query parameter.

NOTE: The Chain of Custody report download is a CSV file, with a maximum size of 15 MB. The remaining records are truncated when this limit is reached.