[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":793},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/how-being-public-by-default-in-security-builds-trust":3,"navigation-en-us":37,"banner-en-us":437,"footer-en-us":447,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Heather Simpson":689,"blog-related-posts-en-us-how-being-public-by-default-in-security-builds-trust":703,"assessment-promotions-en-us":745,"next-steps-en-us":783},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":25,"isFeatured":12,"meta":26,"navigation":27,"path":28,"publishedDate":20,"seo":29,"stem":33,"tagSlugs":34,"__hash__":36},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/how-being-public-by-default-in-security-builds-trust.yml","How Being Public By Default In Security Builds Trust",[7],"heather-simpson",null,"unfiltered",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-being-public-by-default-in-security-builds-trust",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"How being public by default in security builds trust","The rewards of being open in security still outweigh the challenges.",[18],"Heather Simpson","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749670904/Blog/Hero%20Images/corded-devices.jpg","2020-09-03","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\nWe sat down with GitLab sr. security researcher Mark Loveless to talk about his role, how he sees the tech industry changing and the freeing feeling that working public by default (even in Security) brings and the trust that it builds.\n\n![Mark Loveless Headshot](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/mlovelessbw.png) **Name:** Mark Loveless\n\n**Title:** Sr. Security Researcher\n\n**How long have you been at GitLab?**: I joined February 2019\n\n**GitLab handle:** [@mloveless](https://gitlab.com/mloveless)\n\n**Connect with Mark:** [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markloveless) / [Twitter](https://twitter.com/simplenomad)\n\n\n\n#### Tell us what you do here at GitLab:\nI perform research on security-related issues to help protect GitLab team members as well as GitLab customers. This can involve researching a new product feature, evaluating a SaaS product that GitLab is using or considering using, or educating others via presentations and blog posts.\n\n#### What’s the most challenging or rewarding aspect of your role? Security should be painless and just a natural part of someone going about their day. If a process is implemented that makes things more secure and it causes no friction to the point that most people do not even notice it, then I’ve done a good job.\n\n#### And, what are the top 2-3 initiatives you’re currently focused on? In my role, I’m focused on:\n* Outreach via blogs and security conferences. Here’s a sample blog that has links to several other posts I wrote about GitLab’s Zero Trust journey, [“We answer your most popular questions about our Zero Trust journey“](/blog/questions-regarding-our-zero-trust-efforts/)\n\n* Securing the product. This blog post, [“GitLab instance: security best practices“](/blog/gitlab-instance-security-best-practices/) was one that many in the security department helped me with and was written to help our customers harden their instances.\n\n* Occasional mouthpiece to the press on GitLab and industry security practices; again part of that outreach effort. An example: [\"Remote Work Has a Hidden Challenge: Data Security\"](https://www.inc.com/cameron-albert-deitch/remote-work-data-security.html).\n\n#### What is the most significant piece of security advice you could provide to a colleague or friend? Even though it is boring, do not forget the basics! This includes patching, unique passwords, and always using two-factor authentication. The press is full of stories of exotic attacks and flamboyant new bugs, but the basics eliminate the vast majority of threats.\n\n#### How did you get into security? It all started as exploring, discovering that one could get into systems one was not supposed to be in. I loved it. As I got better at what I was doing, I also improved in the tech field in general, since I had to learn what system admins would do so I could avoid getting caught and being kicked out of some server. Eventually I got jobs in the tech field, and as I progressed I had a knack for the security aspects, and it went from there.\n\n#### From the perspective of your role, what’s GitLab doing better than anyone else in terms of security? Openness. When I first started it seemed horrifying that all of the code and the handbook were so open, but in actuality it is quite freeing. We’re “default open” ([public by default](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#public-by-default)). Now this applies to the entire company and not just the security department, but it is nice that we don’t have to worry about security decisions becoming public; they will be regardless. This keeps us honest, and when someone is honest you’re more likely to trust them. This strengthens our security posture in that when we claim to be secure it can be verified, and as issues are identified (by team members or the GitLab community) we can fix them as openly as possible.\n\n#### What was your personal worst moment in the Infosec world and how did you recover? I have been let go from my job twice, both times after a buy-out. In one case the buying company had a policy against hiring hackers, but I expected it and I had another job lined up through a friend in the industry. In the other instance, my job went away and I did not want to transition to another department since it would involve moving. I took my buy-out money and decided to take some time off, or “funemployment”. A friend of mine named Kathy Wang - an early leader here at GitLab who helped grow the security department - saw my blog post about my time off and reached out, mentioning GitLab. So the important lesson here is that maintaining friendships in the security industry can really help in times of need. And you never know when you’ll be in a “time of need.”\n\n#### Name your favorite accomplishment that you are totally not known for. I was at the very first few Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas. While a researcher at a tech firm that was a sponsor at one of those early Black Hat events, we had a brainstorming session where I came up with the idea that we should have an open bar event. Free of charge, no sales pitch stuff, just drinking and networking. It is the norm now, or at least it was pre-pandemic when conferences were in person. YOU’RE WELCOME.\n\n#### Play nostradamus for a minute.  Tell us how you see the tech or security landscape changing in the next 5 years?\nI believed that the tech industry itself would continue the move to all-remote or at least remote first, but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated that quite a bit. As a result I think the principles of both Zero Trust as well as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) will become more of the norm as the tech landscape will be nearly all remote. Any company that is cloud-based with an Internet presence can do this, so many non-technical industries (marketing agencies, consulting firms, and so on) will move in this direction as well. I also believe that a passwordless world is possible, as two factor can consist of factors besides a password like biometrics and a U2F device (e.g. Yubikey), and that within five years this will start to truly become a real thing with actual industry acceptance. I’d love to see that happen, the password is simply one of the biggest failures and worse engineering designs ever.\n\n## Now, for the questions you *really* want to have answered:\n\n\n\n#### What’s your most interesting experience while traveling? I was stopped by TSA and I tested positive for TNT. Here’s [the whole story](https://www.markloveless.net/blog/2019/2/22/p24ekffvg7zyv4usvt1xshev5h1o8z).\n\n#### When traveling, packing cubes or no packing cubes? Packing cubes. My packing ritual is minimalistic. Everything is wear a pair, pack a pair, and I do sink laundry every night (I bring my own soap for this). The idea is that I have all of the tech, clothing, and accessories to last on a three week trip with a single backpack. A bad storm and a packed airport can turn an overnight trip into a week-long ordeal, and I am prepared. This requires an insane level of discipline and planning, and packing cubes are essential to making this process easier.\n\n#### When you’re not working, what do you enjoy doing/how do you spend your free time? It’s a toss-up between playing and recording progressive metal music and working in the woodshop. Both are fun and I’ve done them for years.\n\n#### If you were stranded on an island, what three things would you bring? A water purification kit or Berkey water filtration system, a fully charged GPS, and a fully charged satellite phone. 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Shadow Takeaways from Jacie","Recap of my experience in the CEO Shadow Program.",[709],"Jacie Bandur","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749664102/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlab-values-cover.png","2021-05-18","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\nHi! I’m Jacie Bandur. I completed GitLab’s CEO Shadow program from 2021-04-26 through 2021-05-07. It was a really enlightening experience. I generally work in Learning and Development and consider myself a lifelong learner. I can’t even explain how much I learned in such a short about of time. I learned a lot about the business. I learned a lot about the product. But learned even more about the importance of iteration in everything we do.\n\n### Qualifications to Participate\n\nI wanted to start this off with touching on qualifications to participate in the program.\n\nI am the type of person that has gone through most of my life thinking I’m not qualified for things. I’m not qualified for that job, that promotion, that program. The list goes on and on.\n\nWhen I saw the [CEO Shadow program](/blog/ceo-shadow-impressions-takeaways/) kick off in 2019, I really wanted to participate. I was a little intimidated. Who wouldn’t be, spending 2 weeks with the CEO of any company? But time passed and all the sudden it was 2021 and I had not taken any steps to participating in the program.\n\nIf you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you that you are qualified to participate in this program, I’m not big on giving “pep talks,” but here’s me telling you - You are qualified for this program. There’s never going to be a good or perfect time to do it. Tell your manager you want to do the CEO Shadow program. Stop waiting. Sign up today.\n\nNote: Take a look at the [eligibility](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/shadow/#eligibility) section of the CEO Shadow page for more information on signing up.\n\n### Pre-Program Tips\n\nThere are many things recommended for shadows to do pre-program outlined on the CEO Shadow handbook page. As I was going through the program there were things that I thought helped me (or would have helped me).\n\nHere are my top 6 recommendations:\n\n1. Make sure your team knows you will be unavailable for 2 weeks. This isn’t a program that can or should be done alongside your normal day to day work. I found catching up from the 2 weeks away kind of difficult because I was trying to keep up on what was going on and I had a bunch of half done things.\n1. Talk with people who have done the shadow program - schedule at least 3 coffee chats with CEO Shadow Alumni.\n1. Have food that is easy to eat quickly. Sid’s meetings are back to back most days, so you will have small amounts of time to eat throughout the day. Sid does eat during calls, which you are welcome to do, too, but if you are taking notes, it is difficult to eat. And this will make you realize why speedy meetings are so important!\n1. Listen to the [Executive Leadership LinkedIn Learning course](https://www.linkedin.com/learning/executive-leadership/).\n1. Be prepared to ask questions. When doing the program virtually, there isn’t a ton of time for asking questions, so when one would come up, I would add it to a note on my computer and ask if there was ever time with just the shadows and Sid.\n1. Take at least 1 day off after the program. Take even a couple of days off if you can! This is recommended on the handbook page, but I can’t stress this enough.\n\n\n### Takeaways\n\n**Group Conversations**\n\nI’ve been at GitLab for almost 4 years. When I joined, I made it a point to attend as many GC’s as I could. I had gotten out of the habit of attending Group Conversations. After attending them again for 2 weeks, I realized how important they are to understand better what is going on across the business. Everything in the organization is so intertwined. It’s helpful to understand what other teams are working on and succeeding in.\n\n**Feedback**\n\nWe should all be giving and receiving feedback often. We have a whole [handbook page on giving and receiving feedback](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/guidance-on-feedback/). Read the handbook page and watch the videos, as well. Practice giving feedback. I recommend using the [1-1 agenda](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/suggested-agenda-format/) Sid uses, because Feedback is an essential piece of that agenda, and it makes feedback more of a routine thing.\n\n**Biggest Takeaway**\n\nWe have an incredible team here at GitLab, from Engineering to Product to Sales to People and all the groups in between. There are so many great ideas. I observed the constant reinforcement by Sid to start with something small and build on it. You can ALWAYS make something more complex. It’s hard to go back to something more simple when you start with something complex.\n\nA couple of quotes that I heard from Sid during the program that reinforced this point:\n\n- “Every complex system evolves from a simple system that worked.”\n- “It’s very clear what is the simple solution. We can always make it more complicated as we go on.”\n\nI know they are very similar, but they happened in different meetings on different days, so the point was reinforced repeatedly.\n\nDuring the program, I reflected on the projects that I’am working on. How many of them am I trying to do too much on before releasing. Probably all of them. When I’m working on projects in the future, I will break them down into smaller, more doable chunks. Iteration is hard - it’s a skill to be practicing constantly.\n\n\n### Overall\n\nOverall, the program was really insightful and impactful. If you haven’t participated in it yet, I cannot encourage you enough to do so!\n",{"slug":714,"featured":12,"template":13},"ceo-shadow-recap",{"content":716,"config":728},{"title":717,"description":718,"authors":719,"heroImage":721,"date":722,"body":723,"category":9,"tags":724},"Why I love contributing to GitLab","Making small meaningful changes is what it's all about.",[720],"Austin Regnery","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679501/Blog/Hero%20Images/new-feature.png","2021-05-11","It was mid-morning on a Tuesday in February, and I had 10 minutes in between meetings. So I decided to try and solve a pain point of mine.\nYou see, I had to memorize this HTML snippet to create a collapsible section in GitLab Issue descriptions and comments, but I kept forgetting it. Was it `summary` or `section`? I could never remember.\n```html\n\u003Cdetails>\n\u003Csummary>Insert Title\u003C/summary>\nHidden content\n\u003C/details>\n```\nEven though it is not vanilla Markdown, GitLab knows how to interpret some HTML. I used this formatting trick fairly often since full-page screenshots can occupy a lot of screen space, which leads to excessive scrolling.\nSo I decided to poke around our codebase to see how the other Markdown shortcuts worked. To my surprise, it was pretty straightforward. Each shortcut had a simple text input that mapped to each button. This implementation was simple to replicate since I just needed to copy/paste and replace a few words.\n![Image of Vue and Haml files with editor shortcuts](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/vue-haml.png){: .shadow}\nThe Vue and Haml files with the new shortcut\n\nI started a branch and began hacking away at the code. Now, I would never call myself a Software Engineer, but I like to try and make things from time to time. I was able to add a new shortcut to the toolbar to insert this code snippet for me in less than 10 minutes. No more memorizing! Making contributions like this is what makes working at GitLab so special.\nNow, it wasn't ready for production, but I at least had something that worked. I shared it with my UX colleagues in Slack, and it started to gain traction with several up-votes and few constructive comments on how to make it better.\nWith the functionality flushed out, a few other designers helped me get a better icon added to our SVG library. Using clear iconography is critical for communicating information more clearly.\n| Initial Icon | Final Icon |\n| - | - |\n| ![SVG of chevron right icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/chevron-right.svg) | ![SVG of details block icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/details-block.svg) |\n\nThe last thing to do was resolve my failing tests, and I had several teammates help me do that.\n![Gif of the shortcut being used](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/demo.gif)\n\nToday [this change](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/54938) merged! Now I solved a pain point for me and others. It took a few months to go from idea to production, but the effort was super low. I'd say the return on my initial investment, 10 minutes, is super high.\n> Having a direct impact on a product was never an option for me before joining GitLab.\n\n![Image of participants in the Merge Request](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/participants.png)\n\n\nThank you to everyone that helped me deploy this\n",[725,726,727],"UX","product","AWS",{"slug":729,"featured":12,"template":13},"why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab",{"content":731,"config":743},{"title":732,"description":733,"authors":734,"heroImage":736,"date":722,"body":737,"category":9,"tags":738},"Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph","Have you noticed the connecting lines missing on your pipelines lately? Here's why",[735],"Sam Beckham","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679507/Blog/Hero%20Images/ci-cd.png","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\nHave you ever pressed the close door button on the elevator, in the hope that you'll save a few precious seconds?\nOr got frustrated at the person stood next to you at the cross-walk, neglecting to press the button?\nWell, maybe they know something you don't, or perhaps you know this already.\nMany buttons in our society lie to us.\n[David McRaney](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/) dubbed these, \"Placebo buttons\" and they're everywhere.\nThose elevator doors won't close any faster and the cross-walk button has no effect on the lights.\nThe only lights they control are the lights on the buttons themselves.\nThey give you the feedback you crave, but that's all they're doing.\n\nThese placebos aren't constrained to the physical world, they're prevalent in [UI design](/blog/the-evolution-of-ux-at-gitlab/) too.\nFrom literal placebo buttons like [YouTube's downvote](https://www.quora.com/Does-downvoting-a-comment-on-YouTube-even-do-anything), to more subtle effects like Instagram always [pretending to work](https://www.fastcompany.com/1669788/the-3-white-lies-behind-instagrams-lightning-speed), or progress bars that have a [fixed animation](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/).\nThey're everywhere if you know where to look.\n\nAt GitLab, we created a placebo of our own in one of our core features; the pipeline graph.\n\nThose of you who have used our pipeline graph, will be familiar with its appearance.\nThere's a series of jobs, grouped by stages, connected by a series of lines depicting the relationships between the jobs.\nBut these lines might be lying to you.\nThese lines are indiscriminately drawn between each job in a stage, regardless of their relationship.\nThese lines are placebos.\n\n![The old pipeline rendering with lines connecting every job in a stage](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_old-graph.png)\n\nThis wasn't a problem to begin with.\nA basic pipeline has several jobs across a handful of stages.\nJobs in each stage would run parallel to each other, but each stage would run sequentially.\nIn the image shown above, all the jobs in the test stage would trigger at the same time. Once those jobs had finished, all the jobs in the build stage would trigger.\nWe used rudimentary CSS to draw lines connecting each job in one stage to each job in the next.\nThese lines weren't calculated based on their connections, but still reflected the story they were telling.\n\nSince the introduction of `needs` relationships in [v12.2](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/47063), pipelines got a bit more complicated.\nNow you could configure a job in a later stage to trigger as soon as a job in an earlier stage completed.\nLooking at our old example, we could set the API deployment to run as soon as our spec tests passed.\nThis skips the remaining tests and the entire build stage, turning our lines into pretty little liars.\n\nWe had many internal discussions about these lines, and how to show the relationships between jobs.\nThere's the [`needs` visualization](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/directed_acyclic_graph/#needs-visualization), which does an excellent job of displaying these relationships, but the main pipeline graph was still inaccurate.\nFor the past few months, we've been [refactoring the pipeline graph](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/276949), giving it a new lease of life and fixing some of its issues along the way.\nOne of those issues were the faked lines.\nIn the new version, we can accurately draw lines between jobs.\nLines that actually depict the relationships jobs have with each other.\nNow the lines no-longer lie!\n\n![The newer pipeline graph showing the correct needs links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_new-graph.png)\n\nThe above image shows an unreleased version of the pipeline graph.\nYou can see the lines drawn between the jobs to show that the `deploy:API` job can start as soon as the `rspec` job is successful.\nSomething the old lines (shown earlier in this post) would have been unable to depict.\n\nOne unfortunate downside of this is that these lines can be quite expensive to calculate.\nThey're actual DOM nodes, drawn deliberately and placed precisely.\nOn smaller graphs this isn't a problem, but some of our initial tests have found pipelines with a potential 8000+ job connections.\nThat kind of calculation would grind the browser to a halt, and nobody wants that.\n\nAt GitLab, we believe in boring solutions.\nWe make the simple change that sets us on the path towards where we want to be.\nShip it, get feedback, and iterate.\nSo that's what we did.\nIn the first phase of this rollout, we shipped the new pipeline graph with no lines connecting the jobs.\nWe don't have to worry about the expensive calculations, and we still get to roll out the refactored pipeline graph.\n\n![The current (v13.11) pipeline graph showing no links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_current-graph.png)\n\nWe know some of you will miss them, but fear not.\nBoring solutions are just technical debt if you don't iterate on them.\nSo the [improved lines are coming](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/4509) in a future release, along with several other improvements to the pipeline graph.\nWe're already starting to roll out the new [Job Dependencies](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/298973) view which shows the jobs in a (much closer to) execution order.\nStay tuned for more updates, and watch [Sarah Groff Hennigh Palermo's talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2EKqKjB7OQ) for the technical side of this effort and a deeper dive into some of the decisions we made.\n",[739,740,741,742],"CI","frontend","agile","design",{"slug":744,"featured":12,"template":13},"placebo-lines-on-the-pipeline-graph",{"promotions":746},[747,761,772],{"id":748,"categories":749,"header":751,"text":752,"button":753,"image":758},"ai-modernization",[750],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":754,"config":755},"Get your AI maturity 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