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Continuous Monitoring Best Practices

Continuous Monitoring (CM) is the capability to automatically check your applications for any new violations every night.

CM needs to be configured to a stage before monitoring will start.

Overview of the Continuous Monitoring (CM) Process

  1. Set CM to a specific stage to monitor

    • The release and operate stages are the most common

    • Which stage is monitored may be overridden at the organization level

  2. CM notifications are configured on each policy

    • Focus on critical violations

    • Send notifications to the appropriate role

  3. CM monitors the most recent Lifecycle evaluation

    • CM updates the latest report daily

    • CM creates a new report with every scan

  4. CM may be configured when to run.

    • Midnight on the installation server is the default

  5. Only new violations will trigger notifications

Use Continuous Monitoring to notify you of newly discovered vulnerabilities

  • Sonatype data is updated throughout the day

  • CM will let you know when new vulnerabilities are added to Sonatype data

  • CM informs you of risk before your next release

Most Effective

Not Effective

  • currently deployed to production

  • code that is not built frequently

  • legacy applications

  • third-party applications

  • applications licensed under Sonatype Auditor

  • when configured to a stage that is not scanned

  • when notifications are not configured

  • when applications are evaluated more than once a day

  • evaluations from previous builds (not the latest scan)

  • CM is not used for enforcement

Understand the impact of your Continuous Monitoring strategy

  • CM scans a single application at a time to minimize load

  • A large number of applications may take multiple days to review

    • Approximately 2500 applications are analyzed day

      • 99% of scans are completed in less than 2 minutes

      • 95% are completed in less than 30 sec

  • Consult with Customer Success or Support to increase the CM scan rate

Purge Continuous Monitoring data after 30 days

  • We recommend setting the data retention for CM to 30 days or less

  • Reports from Continuous Monitoring accumulate fast when scanned every night

  • Only the latest report is shown in the UI

Continuous Monitoring Decision Tree

Flowchart image Continuous Monitoring decision tree. See outline after image.

Note

Top of chart begins with Q: "How often am I building this app?"

  1. If "Frequently" to building the app, then "Not a good candidate for Continuous Monitoring. Integrate with your CI/CD system instead."

  2. If "Rarely" to building the app, then Q: "Is this a legacy app?"

    1. If Yes to legacy app, then "Good candidate for Continuous Monitoring."

    2. If No to legacy app, then Q: "Is this app actively deployed to production?"

      1. If Yes to deployed to production, then "Good candidate for Continuous Monitoring."

      2. If No to deployed to production, then Q: "Is this a third-party app?"

        1. If Yes to third-party app, then "Good candidate for Continuous Monitoring."

        2. If No to third-party app, then Q: "Do you need visibility on this app?"

          1. If Yes on visibility, then "Turn on Continuous Monitoring for now."

          2. If No on visibility, then "Accept the risk of not scanning."