The Service Life Cycle plan documents the phases of a major software release.
Context
The purpose of this control is to formalize the documentation and approval of software changes before those changes are implemented. This rigid process helps protect GitLab from insecure code being quickly pushed out into production without proper vetting.
Scope
This control applies to all major software releases to GitLab.com.
Ownership
Control Owner: Delivery
Process owner(s):
Delivery
Infrastructure
Guidance
Most of this process is already captured in current GitLab workflow; the difficult part of this process will be coverage of all major software changes. Below is a detailed description of the workflow by stages:
Product Development Workflow describes the validation and build tracks for the proposed changes.
Step 2: Create - coding
The entire engineering workflow is documented here, which describes the process from the basics such as how to pick something to work on and includes the link to the project where the issues are housed – this is the starting point for the testing of SLC artifacts
Instructions on scoped labels used in updating issues using the scoped labels workflow:: series through development to the product development timeline – following the scoped labels can be useful in testing the different parts of the cycle
The handbook section on code review process– this is represented within issues as the Reviewer Roulette function
All code merged into the GitLab.com codebase must be reviewed by an authorized Reviewer, as described in our code review documentation
The security release process is documented in the handbook– *is useful for testing the Verify step of the DevOps cycle and Secure value stage
Step 4: Change Management
The Change Management process is documented in the handbook. It provides guidance on using the appropriate label based on the type of change, such as DeploymentNewFeature.
Step 5: Packing and Release
Infrastructure for the GitLab system is defined as code and deployed using Terraform and Chef. These act as baseline configurations for our production systems. Changes made to those repositories - and therefore to our infrastructure - is subject to the same review process as our codebase.
For a description of how GitLab uses the CI/CD internally for the GitLab system, there's this Infrastructure page.
Additional control information and project tracking
Non-public information relating to this security control as well as links to the work associated with various phases of project work can be found in the Service Lifecycle Workflow control issue.
Examples of evidence an auditor might request to satisfy this control:
Documentation outlining our development and release workflows
Sample releases and their respective reviews
Sample pipeline artifacts and merge request reviews
Feature requests would be a great example of this process since they are planned via epics and issues, created via MR's, and then run through a GitLab pipeline to satisfy the remaining requirements for this control
