New Feature: Code risks tracking for multi-branch repositories

What is multi-branch support in Arnica?

Arnica’s new multi-branch feature enhances our pipelineless approach to application security by enabling comprehensive risk management and compliance tracking across multiple branches and product versions. This feature is designed to address the complexities faced by customers who simultaneously support multiple product versions with diverse compliance requirements.  

Key values from the multi-branch feature include:

Version-specific Risk Management:

• Allows users to track and manage risks for different product versions running in separate branches.
• Ensures that fixes applied to one version are appropriately tracked and managed across other relevant versions.

Branch-specific Policies and SLAs:

• Supports the implementation of distinct risk and compliance policies for different branches. Users can define and enforce unique SLAs and risk appetites for each branch, accommodating compliance requirements that may differ between release versions.

Support for Advanced Deployment Strategies:

• Facilitates the management of complex deployment strategies like canary and blue-green deployments. Enables different branches to be directed to specific environments or functionalities, providing better control and tracking for these deployment scenarios.
• Supports separate inventory views, executive risk reports, and individual SBOM artifacts for each product version or release candidate even within the same repository.  

With Arnica’s multi-branch feature, users can efficiently manage multiple branches, ensure policy compliance, and maintain control over diverse deployment strategies, ultimately leading to enhanced security and operational efficiency.

What are the primary use cases for Arnica for multi-branch?  

The introduction of multi-branch support came directly from customer feedback around trying to accomplish several core use cases within their Application Security program:  

‍Managing Multiple Product Versions:

Users often have multiple product versions running in different branches. Keeping track of risks and fixes across these versions can be cumbersome. Multi-branch support helps by allowing users to manage findings specific to each version, ensuring that if a risk is fixed in one version, it is also tracked and managed in other relevant versions.

Diverse Compliance and Risk Policies:

Different branches may have different compliance requirements and risk appetites. For instance, one branch might contain a version that is deployed on-prem that faces different licensing constraints than its cloud-oriented peers. Multi-branch supports the application of distinct policies for different branches, enabling users to track and manage SLAs according to each branch's specific requirements.

Handling Canary and Blue-Green Deployments:

In advanced deployment scenarios like canary or blue-green deployments, the same code base might need to operate in different environments or functionalities. Multi-branch allows users to manage these deployments effectively, ensuring that different branches can be directed to specific environments or functionalities, thereby providing better control and tracking for these complex deployment strategies.

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By leveraging these new multi-branch capabilities, Arnica users can streamline the management of code risks, enhance compliance, and improve security efficiency across various development workflows.