Best Practices: Jira integration with Endor Labs

Explore how to effectively use Endor Labs with Jira to manage security findings within your organization’s software development workflows. Endor Labs analyzes your software dependencies, generates security findings, and automatically creates Jira tickets to track and resolve these issues. Each ticket links to your project and contains specific details about the detected vulnerabilities.

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Set up Jira integration in Endor Labs

Endor Labs integrates with Jira Cloud to automatically create tickets in your projects when it detects a violation of configured policies, streamlining your organization’s security workflow. See Jira integration with Endor Labs for more information.

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Track findings in Jira

A finding is a security vulnerability in your source code. When Endor Labs scans a project, it analyzes its dependencies, which are the software packages the project relies on and generates findings. A package version is a specific release of a dependency, identified by a version number (for example, jwx v1.0.5). Endor Labs automatically creates a Jira ticket to track and address the issue when it identifies a finding. The ticket includes the project URL, branch, details about findings such as:

• Finding: A link to the identified vulnerability.
• Explanation: A brief description of the issue.
• Summary: Technical details about the vulnerability, versions affected, and packages impacted.
• Remediation: Recommended actions, such as upgrading to a secure version.
• Location: Exact file, package, dependency, and repository where Endor Labs identified the vulnerability.

You can assign the ticket to an individual for remediation. Based on the selected issue type and the aggregation type, it can be one of the following:

• Task
• Sub-Task
• Bug

Jira organizes findings and their tickets within a project. A project serves as a centralized space for managing all related issues. To learn more about setting up a project, refer to the Jira documentation.

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Choose the right notification aggregation type

Choose the appropriate notification aggregation type to organize security findings in Jira effectively. See Aggregation Types for more information.

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Project

Use Project aggregation to receive a single Jira notification for all findings in a project. This groups all findings into one Jira ticket. It is ideal for teams that prefer a high-level view of issues. For example, the back-end team relies on libraries such as archiver and jwx. Endor Labs compiles all findings from these libraries into a single Jira Task. This approach helps the teams:

• Avoid excessive notifications and streamline remediation efforts.
• Manage all security related issues within their designated Jira project.
• Improve tracking and collaboration.

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Dependency

Use Dependency aggregation to receive separate notifications for each affected dependency in a project. Endor Labs creates a parent Jira ticket, with each dependency tracked as a Sub-Task with its findings. This approach is ideal for teams prioritizing security management at the dependency level. For example, the back-end team developing a Go application relies on libraries like archiver and jwx. When Endor Labs scans the project:

• Findings for archiver are present in its Sub-Task.
• Findings for jwx are present in its Sub-Task.

This approach ensures:

• A clear division of responsibilities for efficient vulnerability tracking.
• Focused issue resolution without overwhelming teams.
• Granular visibility into security risks for targeted management.

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Dependency per package version

Use this to receive separate notifications for each affected package version. Each version has its own Sub-Task under a parent Jira ticket, with its findings present in the respective Sub-Task. For example, a Go project using the jwx library has multiple versions in use. Endor Labs creates a parent Jira ticket, with each affected version tracked as Sub-Tasks:

• Findings for jwx v2.0.13 are present in its Sub-Task.
• Findings for jwx v1.0.5 are present in its Sub-Task.

This approach helps the teams:

• Apply security fixes precisely without triggering unnecessary updates.
• Reduce notification noise and focus on resolving issues in their specific dependencies.
• Maintain stability in machine learning workflows while managing vulnerabilities effectively.

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None (Notify for each Finding)

Use this to receive a separate notification for every finding and create an individual Jira ticket for each finding. This aggregation type can produce a high volume of Jira tickets when many findings match the policy. This approach also provides granular tracking so teams can monitor and remediate each issue independently. For example, when you scan the app-java-demo project with this aggregation type configured on the action policy, Endor Labs creates a separate Jira Task ticket for each finding detected in the project. This approach helps the teams:

• Track the remediation status of each vulnerability individually.
• Assign findings to different team members for parallel resolution.
• Enable clear audit and compliance reporting with one-to-one mapping between findings and tickets.

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Jira tickets

Each Jira ticket contains specific labels, comments, and custom fields to provide context and streamline tracking.

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Labels

Endor Labs automatically assigns labels to Jira tickets to simplify the management of security issues. These labels appear in the right sidebar of the Jira ticket under Details. Endor Labs provides the following labels: endorlabs-scan: Assigned to every Jira ticket that an Endor Labs scan generates. endor-severity: Indicates the severity of the associated finding, such as critical, high, medium, or low. If a ticket includes multiple findings with different severities, the label represents the highest severity among them. In the following example, the ticket titled “Findings with no dependencies” includes the following labels: endorlabs-scan: Identifies the ticket as part of an Endor Labs scan. endor-severity:medium: Represents the severity of the detected finding.

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Comments

During future scans, Endor Labs updates the status of the findings in comments on your Jira ticket. When Endor Labs detects new findings, it adds a comment with their details. When Endor Labs resolves existing findings, it adds a comment with their details.

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Components

Endor Labs automatically sets the Components field using values from your Jira project configured during the Jira integration with Endor Labs.

• For a team-managed Jira project, Endor Labs applies the configured component value to each ticket it creates. In the following example, Test DEPR Component is the assigned components value.
• For a company-managed Jira project, Endor Labs applies all configured component values to each ticket it creates. In the following example, Test DEPR Component and Test UI Component are the assigned components values.

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Considerations

Ensure your Jira board has a designated resolution state like Done, Fixed, etc. for Endor Labs to mark tickets as resolved. If no such state exists, the ticket remains unresolved. Ensure that tickets can transition from a beginning state, such as To Do, to a resolution state like Done without requiring intermediate states such as In Progress. If the workflow restricts direct movement, Endor Labs cannot move tickets between states, and you must update the status manually on your Jira board.

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FAQs