About security overview
Security overview provides high-level summaries of the security landscape of an organization or enterprise and makes it easy to identify repositories that require intervention. You can also use security overview to see which repositories have enabled specific security features and to configure any available security features that are not currently in use.
Note: Security overview shows information and metrics for the default branches of an organization's repositories.
Security overview shows which security features are enabled for repositories and includes repository and alert-focused views so you can quickly investigate security issues and take action to remediate them.
- Risk and coverage information about Dependabot features and alerts is shown for all repositories.
- Risk and coverage information for GitHub Advanced Security features, such as code scanning and secret scanning, is shown for enterprises that use GitHub Advanced Security and for public repositories.
- An organization-level dashboard of insights from security features is shown for enterprise-owned organizations that use GitHub Advanced Security and for public repositories.
For more information, see "About Dependabot alerts" and "About GitHub Advanced Security."
You can download comma-separated values (CSV) files containing data from the risk and coverage pages of security overview. These files can be used for efforts like security research and in-depth data analysis, and can integrate easily with external datasets. For more information, see "Exporting data from the risk and coverage pages."
The views are interactive with filters that allow you to look at the aggregated data in detail and identify sources of high risk or low feature coverage. As you apply multiple filters to focus on narrower areas of interest, all data and metrics across the view change to reflect your current selection. For more information, see "Filtering alerts in security overview."
There are also dedicated views for each type of security alert that you can use to limit your analysis to a specific set of alerts, and then narrow the results further with a range of filters specific to each view. For example, in the secret scanning alert view, you can use the "Secret type" filter to view only secret scanning alerts for a specific secret, like a GitHub personal access token.
Note: Security overview displays active alerts raised by security features. If there are no alerts shown in security overview for a repository, undetected security vulnerabilities or code errors may still exist or the feature may not be enabled for that repository.
About security overview for organizations
The application security team at your company can use the different views for both broad and specific analyses of your organization's security status. For example, the team can use the "Overview" dashboard view (beta) to track your organization's security landscape and progression. You can also use security overview to find a set of repositories and enable or disable security features for them all at the same time. For more information, see "Enabling security features for multiple repositories."
You can find security overview on the Security tab for any organization that's owned by an enterprise. Each view shows a summary of the data that you have access to. As you add filters, all data and metrics across the view change to reflect the repositories or alerts that you've selected. For information about permissions, see "Permission to view data in security overview."
Security overview has multiple views that provide different ways to explore enablement and alert data.
- Use "Overview" to view insights about your organization's security landscape and progress.
- Use "Coverage" to assess the adoption of code security features across repositories in the organization.
- Use "Risk" to assess the risk from security alerts of all types for one or more repositories in the organization.
- Use the individual security alert views to identify your risk from specific vulnerable dependencies, code weaknesses, or leaked secrets.
Note: The summary views ("Overview", "Coverage" and "Risk") show data only for high confidence alerts. Code scanning alerts from third-party tools, and secret scanning alerts for ignored directories and non-provider alerts are all omitted from these views. Consequently, the individual alert views may include a larger number of open and closed alerts.
For more information about these views, see "Viewing security insights for your organization,""Assessing adoption of code security features" and "Assessing your code security risk."
About security overview for enterprises
You can find security overview on the Code Security tab for your enterprise. Each page displays aggregated and repository-specific security information for your enterprise.
As with security overview for organizations, security overview for enterprises has multiple views that provide different ways to explore enablement and alert data.
- Use the "Coverage" view to assess the adoption of code security features across organizations in the enterprise.
- Use the "Risk" view to assess the risk from security alerts of all types across organizations in the enterprise.
- Use the individual security alert views to identify your risk from specific vulnerable dependencies, code weaknesses, or leaked secrets.
For information about permissions, see "Permission to view data in security overview."
Permission to view data in security overview
If you are an owner or security manager for an organization, you can see data for all the repositories in the organization in all views. You can see the data in the organization-level security overview, or see data for all organizations where you are an owner or security manager in the enterprise-level security overview.
If you are an enterprise owner, you will need to join an organization as an organization owner to view data for the organization's repositories in either the organization-level or enterprise-level overview. For more information, see "Managing your role in an organization owned by your enterprise."
If you are an organization member, you can view security overview for the organization and see data for repositories where you have access. You can view this data in the organization-level overview, but you cannot access the enterprise-level overview.
Note: To ensure a consistent and responsive experience, for organization members, the organization-level security overview pages will only display results from the most recently updated 3,000 repositories. If your results have been restricted, a notification will appear at the top of the page. Organization owners and security managers will see results from all repositories.
| Organization member with | Overview dashboard (beta) view | Risk and alerts views | Coverage view |
|---|---|---|---|
admin access for one or more repositories | View data for those repositories | View data for those repositories | View data for those repositories |
write access for one or more repositories | View code scanning and Dependabot data for those repositories | View code scanning and Dependabot data for those repositories | No access for those repositories |
| Security alert access for one or more repositories | View all security alert data for those repositories | View all security alert data for those repositories | No access for those repositories |
| Custom organization role with permission to view one or more types of security alert | View allowed alert data for all repositories | View allowed alert data for all repositories in all views | No access |
For more information about access to security alerts and related views, see "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository" and "About custom repository roles."