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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-03-15. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Enforcing policies for security settings in your enterprise

In this article

You can enforce policies to manage security settings in your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Who can use this feature

Enterprise owners can enforce policies for security settings in an enterprise.

About policies for security settings in your enterprise

You can enforce policies to control the security settings for organizations owned by your enterprise on GitHub Enterprise Server. By default, organization owners can manage security settings.

Requiring two-factor authentication for organizations in your enterprise

If your GitHub Enterprise Server instance uses LDAP or built-in authentication, enterprise owners can require that organization members, billing managers, and outside collaborators in all organizations owned by an enterprise use two-factor authentication to secure their user accounts.

Before you can require 2FA for all organizations owned by your enterprise, you must enable two-factor authentication for your own account. For more information, see "Securing your account with two-factor authentication (2FA)."

Warnings:

  • When you require two-factor authentication for your enterprise, members, outside collaborators, and billing managers (including bot accounts) in all organizations owned by your enterprise who do not use 2FA will be removed from the organization and lose access to its repositories. They will also lose access to their forks of the organization's private repositories. You can reinstate their access privileges and settings if they enable two-factor authentication for their account within three months of their removal from your organization. For more information, see "Reinstating a former member of your organization."
  • Any organization owner, member, billing manager, or outside collaborator in any of the organizations owned by your enterprise who disables 2FA for their account after you've enabled required two-factor authentication will automatically be removed from the organization.
  • If you're the sole owner of an enterprise that requires two-factor authentication, you won't be able to disable 2FA for your user account without disabling required two-factor authentication for the enterprise.

Before you require use of two-factor authentication, we recommend notifying organization members, outside collaborators, and billing managers and asking them to set up 2FA for their accounts. Organization owners can see if members and outside collaborators already use 2FA on each organization's People page. For more information, see "Viewing whether users in your organization have 2FA enabled."

  1. In the top-right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Settings.

  3. Under Settings, click Security.

  4. Under "Two-factor authentication", review the information about changing the setting. Optionally, to view the current configuration for all organizations in the enterprise account before you change the setting, click View your organizations' current configurations.

Screenshot of a policy in the enterprise settings. A link, labeled "View your organizations' current configurations", is highlighted with an orange outline. 5. Under "Two-factor authentication", select Require two-factor authentication for all organizations in your business, then click Save. 6. If prompted, read the information about members and outside collaborators who will be removed from the organizations owned by your enterprise. To confirm the change, type your enterprise's name, then click Remove members & require two-factor authentication. 7. Optionally, if any members or outside collaborators are removed from the organizations owned by your enterprise, we recommend sending them an invitation to reinstate their former privileges and access to your organization. Each person must enable two-factor authentication before they can accept your invitation.

Managing SSH certificate authorities for your enterprise

You can use a SSH certificate authorities (CA) to allow members of any organization owned by your enterprise to access that organization's repositories using SSH certificates you provide. You can require that members use SSH certificates to access organization resources, unless SSH is disabled in your repository. For more information, see "About SSH certificate authorities."

When you issue each client certificate, you must include an extension that specifies which GitHub Enterprise Server user the certificate is for. For more information, see "About SSH certificate authorities."

Adding an SSH certificate authority

If you require SSH certificates for your enterprise, enterprise members should use a special URL for Git operations over SSH. For more information, see "About SSH certificate authorities."

Each certificate authority can only be uploaded to one account on GitHub.com. If an SSH certificate authority has been added to an organization or enterprise account, you cannot add the same certificate authority to another organization or enterprise account on GitHub.com.

  1. In the top-right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Settings.

  3. Under Settings, click Security.

  4. To the right of "SSH Certificate Authorities", click New CA.

  5. Under "Key," paste your public SSH key.

  6. Click Add CA.

  7. Optionally, to require members to use SSH certificates, select Require SSH Certificates, then click Save.

    Note: When you require SSH certificates, the requirement does not apply to authorized OAuth apps and GitHub Apps or to GitHub features such as GitHub Actions, which are trusted environments within the GitHub ecosystem.

Deleting an SSH certificate authority

Deleting a CA cannot be undone. If you want to use the same CA in the future, you'll need to upload the CA again.

  1. In the top-right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Settings.

  3. Under Settings, click Security.

  4. Under "SSH Certificate Authorities", to the right of the CA you want to delete, click Delete.

  5. Read the warning, then click I understand, please delete this CA.

Further reading