Issues vs Rules vs Alerts

These three terms are related but not the same:

Rule

• A rule is the detection logic (policy) that identifies a problem.
• Your rules have IDs like CODE-0001, CODE-0002, etc.
• Rules belong to a catalog (SAST, SCA, Secrets, IaC, License, Containers, Kubernetes, etc.).

Issue

• An issue is a specific instance of a rule finding in your code or configuration.
• Example: Rule CODE-0123 triggers on a file in a PR → an issue is created for that PR/branch context.

Alert

• An alert is a notification/event generated from issues or posture changes.
• Examples:
  • New critical introduced in PR
  • Severity score crossed threshold
  • Policy gate failed
  • Slack notification sent