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Compliance center

DETAILS: Tier: Ultimate Offering: SaaS, self-managed

  • Renamed from Compliance report in GitLab 16.3.

The compliance center is the central location for compliance teams to manage their compliance standards adherence reporting, violations reporting, and compliance frameworks for their group.

Compliance standards adherence dashboard

The compliance standards adherence dashboard lists the adherence status of projects complying to the GitLab standard.

When a project is added or an associated project or group setting is changed, an adherence scan is run on that project to update the standards adherence for that project. The date in the Last Scanned column reflects any changes.

View the compliance standards adherence dashboard

Prerequisites:

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

To view the compliance standards adherence dashboard for a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.

You can filter the compliance standards adherence dashboard on:

  • The project that the check was performed on.
  • The type of check that was performed on a project.
  • The standard that the check belongs to.

You can group the compliance standards adherence dashboard on:

  • The type of check that was performed on a project.

GitLab standard

The GitLab standard consists of three rules:

  • Prevent authors as approvers.
  • Prevent committers as approvers.
  • At least two approvals.

Prevent authors as approvers

To comply with the GitLab standard, you must prevent users from approving their own merge requests. For more information, see Prevent approval by author.

On self-managed GitLab, when instance-level setting for prevent approval by author is updated, the adherence status for all the projects on the instance is not updated automatically. To update the adherence status for these projects, the group-level or the project-level setting must be updated.

Prevent committers as approvers

To comply with the GitLab standard, you must prevent users from approving merge requests where they've added commits. For more information, see Prevent approvals by users who add commits.

On self-managed GitLab, when instance-level setting for prevent approvals by users who add commits is updated, the adherence status for all the projects on the instance is not updated automatically. To update the adherence status for these projects, the group-level or the project-level setting must be updated.

At least two approvals

To comply with the GitLab standard, you must have at least two users approve a merge request to get it merged. For more information, see Merge request approval rules.

Export compliance standards adherence report for projects in a group

  • Introduced in GitLab 16.8 with a flag named compliance_standards_adherence_csv_export. Disabled by default.
  • Generally available in GitLab 16.9. Feature flag compliance_standards_adherence_csv_export removed.

Exports the contents of a standards adherence report for projects in a group. Reports are truncated at 15 MB to avoid a large email attachment.

Prerequisites:

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

To export the compliance standards adherence report for projects in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. In the top-right corner, select Export.
  4. Select Export standards adherence report.

A report is compiled and delivered to your email inbox as an attachment.

Compliance violations report

With the compliance violations report, you can see a high-level view of merge request activity for all projects in the group.

When you select a row in the compliance violations report, a drawer appears that provides:

  • The project name and compliance framework label, if the project has one assigned.
  • A link to the merge request that introduced the violation.
  • 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.

View the compliance violations report for a group

Prerequisites:

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

To view the compliance violations report:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.

You can sort the compliance report on:

  • Severity level.
  • Type of violation.
  • Merge request title.

You can filter the compliance violations report on:

  • The project that the violation was found on.
  • The date range of violation.
  • The target branch of the violation.

Select a row to see details of the compliance violation.

Severity levels

Each compliance violation has one of the following severities.

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

From GitLab 14.10, these are the available compliance violations.

Violation Severity level Category Description
Author approved merge request High Separation of duties Author of the merge request approved their own merge request. For more information, see Prevent approval by author.
Committers approved merge request High Separation of duties Committers of the merge request approved the merge request they contributed to. For more information, see Prevent approvals by users who add commits.
Fewer than two approvals High Separation of duties Merge request was merged with fewer than two approvals. For more information, see Merge request approval rules.
Separation of duties

GitLab supports a separation of duties policy between users who create and approve merge requests. Our criteria for the separation of duties is:

Export a report of merge request compliance violations on projects in a group

Export a report of merge request compliance violations on merge requests belonging to projects in a group. Reports:

  • Do not use filters on the violations report.
  • Are truncated at 15 MB so the email attachment is not too large.

Prerequisites:

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

To export a report of merge request compliance violations for projects in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. In the top-right corner, select Export.
  4. Select Export violations report.

A report is compiled and delivered to your email inbox as an attachment.

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.
  • Generally available in GitLab 15.5. Feature flag async_chain_of_custody_report removed.
  • Chain of Custody report includes all commits (instead of just merge commits) introduced in GitLab 15.9 with a flag named all_commits_compliance_report. Disabled by default.
  • Generally available in GitLab 15.9. Feature flag all_commits_compliance_report removed.

The Chain of Custody report provides a 1 month trailing window of all commits to a project under the group.

To generate the report for all commits, GitLab:

  1. Fetches all projects under the group.
  2. For each project, fetches the last 1 month of commits. Each project is capped at 1024 commits. If there are more than 1024 commits in the 1-month window, they are truncated.
  3. Writes the commits to a CSV file. The file is truncated at 15 MB because the report is emailed as an attachment (GitLab 15.5 and later).

The report includes:

  • Commit SHA.
  • Commit author.
  • Committer.
  • Date committed.
  • Group.
  • Project.

If the commit has a related merge commit, then the following are also included:

  • Merge commit SHA.
  • Merge request ID.
  • User who merged the merge request.
  • Merge date.
  • Pipeline ID.
  • Merge request approvers.

Generate Chain of Custody report

To generate the Chain of Custody report:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. In the top-right corner, select Export.
  4. Select Export chain of custody report.

Depending on your version of GitLab, the Chain of Custody report is either sent through email or available for download.

Generate commit-specific Chain of Custody report

  • Introduced in GitLab 13.6.
  • Support for including all commits instead of only merge commits added in GitLab 15.10.

You can generate a commit-specific Chain of Custody report for a given commit SHA. This report provides only the details for the provided commit SHA.

To generate a commit-specific Chain of Custody report:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. In the top-right corner, select Export.
  4. Select Export custody report of a specific commit.
  5. Enter the commit SHA, and then select Export custody report.

Depending on your version of GitLab, the Chain of Custody report is either sent through email or available for download.

Alternatively, use 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.

Compliance projects report

With compliance projects report, you can see the compliance frameworks that are applied to projects in a group. Each row of the report shows:

  • Project name.
  • Project path.
  • Compliance framework label if the project has one assigned.

The default framework for the group has a default badge.

View the compliance projects report for a group

Prerequisites:

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

To view the compliance projects report:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Projects tab.

Apply a compliance framework to projects in a group

  • Adding compliance frameworks using bulk actions introduced in GitLab 15.11.
  • Adding compliance frameworks without using bulk actions introduced in GitLab 16.0.

You can apply a compliance framework to projects in a group.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have the Owner role for the group.

To apply a compliance framework to one project in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Projects tab.
  4. Next to the project you want to add the compliance framework to, select {plus} Add framework.
  5. Select an existing compliance framework or create a new one.

To apply a compliance framework to multiple projects in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Projects tab.
  4. Select multiple projects.
  5. From the Choose one bulk action dropdown list, select Apply framework to selected projects.
  6. Select framework to apply.
  7. Select Apply.

Remove a compliance framework from projects in a group

  • Removing compliance frameworks using bulk actions introduced in GitLab 15.11.
  • Removing compliance frameworks without using bulk actions introduced in GitLab 16.0.

You can remove a compliance framework from projects in a group.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have the Owner role for the group.

To remove a compliance framework from one project in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Projects tab.
  4. Next to the compliance framework to remove from the project, select {close} on the framework label.

To remove a compliance framework from multiple projects in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Projects tab.
  4. Select multiple projects.
  5. From the Choose one bulk action dropdown list, select Remove framework from selected projects.
  6. Select Remove.

Export a report of compliance frameworks on projects in a group

Export a report of compliance frameworks that are applied to projects in a group. Reports:

  • Do not use filters on the framework report.
  • Are truncated at 15 MB so the email attachment too large.

Prerequisites:

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

To export a report of compliance frameworks on projects in a group:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. In the top-right corner, select Export.
  4. Select Export list of project frameworks.

A report is compiled and delivered to your email inbox as an attachment.

Filter the compliance projects report

To filter the list of compliance frameworks:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Projects tab.
  4. In the search field:
    1. Select the attribute you want to filter by.
    2. Select an operator.
    3. Select from the list of options or enter text for the search.
  5. Select Search.

Repeat this process to filter by multiple attributes.

Compliance frameworks report

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is available. To hide the feature an administrator to disable the feature flag named compliance_framework_report_ui. On GitLab.com, this feature is available.

With compliance frameworks report, you can see all the compliance frameworks in a group. Each row of the report shows:

  • Framework name.
  • Associated projects.

The default framework for the group has a default badge.

View the compliance frameworks report for a group

Prerequisites:

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

To view the compliance projects report:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Secure > Compliance center.
  3. On the page, select the Frameworks tab.