Ship Every Release with Confidence
Understand what changed, verify what matters, and gate releases with defensible security decisions. Determine whether a build is ready to ship based on real exposure, verification completeness, and policy, not last-minute guesswork.
Security Signals Don’t Always Map Cleanly to Ship Decisions
As release cadence accelerates, security teams are asked to answer one critical question over and over:
“Is this release safe to ship?”
Most organizations struggle to answer confidently because:
- Security findings aren’t tied cleanly to specific builds and changes
- Teams can’t easily see what’s different from the last release
- Vulnerabilities are prioritized by severity, not real exposure
- Fixes aren’t consistently verified before shipping
- Release gates rely on manual checklists and subjective judgment
The result is friction between security and engineering, delayed releases, or—worse—shipping without confidence that real risk has been addressed.
Release readiness shouldn’t depend on manual correlation or ad hoc reviews. It should be a repeatable, evidence-backed workflow that answers:
- What changed since the last release?
- What real risk remains?
- What has been verified?
- What blocks shipment—and why?
Finite State turns release readiness into a continuous security gating process grounded in shipped software, real exposure, and verifiable evidence.
How It Works
Understand What Changed Since the Last Release
Each new build is compared against the previous release to generate a “what's changed” view that focuses attention on new risk, not the entire historical backlog.
Identify:
- New or modified components
- Introduced or resolved vulnerabilities
- Changes in reachability or exploitability
- Updates to verification or policy status
What you get: Immediate visibility into what actually requires review before shipping.
Prioritize Remaining Risk Based on Real Exposure
Unresolved vulnerabilities are evaluated using reachability analysis and exploit context—not severity alone. Only vulnerabilities that represent real, exploitable exposure in the current build are treated as release-relevant risk.
Previously unreachable issues remain documented but don’t block shipment unless exposure changes.
What you get: Release decisions based on real risk, not noise.
Verify Fixes and Required Controls
For vulnerabilities and requirements that must be addressed before release, verification status is tracked directly against the build. Verification may include static or binary checks, configuration validation, or evidence tied to security requirements and controls.
What you get: Clear answers to what has been verified, what remains outstanding, and what still needs attention.
Apply Policy-Based Security Gates
Release policies encode organizational risk tolerance and obligations into executable gates. Each evaluation produces a clear pass/fail result with supporting rationale.
Evaluate against criteria such as:
- Reachable, exploitable vulnerabilities
- Verification completeness
- Outstanding high-risk findings
- Compliance-related readiness signals
What you get: Consistent, explainable gating decisions that scale across teams and releases.
Block, Approve, or Ship With Rationale
When a release is blocked or approved, the decision is recorded with full context for a durable record of why a release shipped or didn't.
Track:
- What risk remains
- What was verified
- What policy conditions were met or violated
What you get: Fewer escalations, clearer accountability, and confidence in every release decision.
Key Focus Areas
Policy-Based Security Gates
Make ship/no-ship decisions using consistent criteria. Security gates apply the same policies to every build and produce clear outcomes with rationale.
Impact: Release decisions are consistent, explainable, and no longer dependent on subjective judgment.
Verification Completeness
Know whether required fixes and controls are proven. Verification status is tracked at the build level and tied to shipped artifacts.
Impact: Teams know exactly what blocks shipment, and what clears it.
Clear Blockers and Risk Summaries
Surface actionable blockers instead of raw findings. Release readiness views summarize what blocks shipment, why, and what actions are required next.
Impact: Faster decisions, fewer escalations, and less back-and-forth during release windows.
What This Enables
With evidence-backed release readiness and security gating, teams can:
Ship faster without increasing risk
Reduce friction between security and engineering
Eliminate last-minute release surprises
Maintain consistent security standards across products
Stand behind release decisions with confidence
Integratations for Release Readiness
Surface release readiness signals, policy decisions, and blockers directly in the tools your team already use.
See Release Readiness in Action
Know what changed. Verify what matters. Ship with confidence.