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Securing your repository

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You can use a number of GitHub features to help keep your repository secure.

Who can use this feature

Repository administrators and organization owners can configure repository security settings.

Introduction

This guide shows you how to configure security features for a repository. You must be a repository administrator or organization owner to configure security settings for a repository.

Your security needs are unique to your repository, so you may not need to enable every feature for your repository. For more information, see "GitHub security features."

Some features are available for repositories on all plans. Additional features are available to enterprises that use GitHub Advanced Security. GitHub Advanced Security features are also enabled for all public repositories on GitHub.com. For more information, see "About GitHub Advanced Security."

Managing access to your repository

The first step to securing a repository is to establish who can see and modify your code. For more information, see "Managing your repository’s settings and features."

From the main page of your repository, click Settings, then scroll down to the "Danger Zone."

Managing the dependency graph

The dependency graph is automatically generated for all public repositories. You can choose to enable it for forks and for private repositories. The dependency graph interprets manifest and lock files in a repository to identify dependencies.

  1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
  2. Click Security & analysis.
  3. Next to Dependency graph, click Enable or Disable.

For more information, see "Exploring the dependencies of a repository."

Managing Dependabot alerts

Dependabot alerts are generated when GitHub identifies a dependency in the dependency graph with a vulnerability. You can enable Dependabot alerts for any repository.

  1. Click your profile photo, then click Settings.
  2. Click Security & analysis.
  3. Click Enable all next to Dependabot alerts.

For more information, see "About Dependabot alerts" and "Managing security and analysis settings for your personal account."

Managing dependency review

Dependency review lets you visualize dependency changes in pull requests before they are merged into your repositories. For more information, see "About dependency review."

Dependency review is a GitHub Advanced Security feature. Dependency review is already enabled for all public repositories. Organizations that use GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Advanced Security can additionally enable dependency review for private and internal repositories. For more information, see the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

Managing Dependabot security updates

For any repository that uses Dependabot alerts, you can enable Dependabot security updates to raise pull requests with security updates when vulnerabilities are detected.

  1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
  2. Click Security & analysis.
  3. Next to Dependabot security updates, click Enable.

For more information, see "About Dependabot security updates" and "Configuring Dependabot security updates."

Managing Dependabot version updates

You can enable Dependabot to automatically raise pull requests to keep your dependencies up-to-date. For more information, see "About Dependabot version updates."

  1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
  2. Click Security & analysis.
  3. Next to Dependabot version updates, click Enable to create a basic dependabot.yml configuration file.
  4. Specify the dependencies to update and commit the file to the repository. For more information, see "Configuring Dependabot version updates."

Configuring code scanning

You can configure code scanning to automatically identify vulnerabilities and errors in the code stored in your repository by using a CodeQL analysis workflow or third-party tool. Depending on the programming languages in your repository, you can configure code scanning with CodeQL using the default setup, in which GitHub automatically determines the languages to scan, query suites to run, and events that will trigger a new scan.

  1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
  2. In the "Security" section of the sidebar, click Code security and analysis.
  3. In the "Code scanning" section, select Set up , then click Default.
  4. In the pop-up window that appears, review the default configuration settings for your repository, then click Enable CodeQL.

Alternatively, you can use the advanced setup, which generates a workflow file you can edit to customize your code scanning with CodeQL. For more information, see "Configuring code scanning for a repository."

Code scanning is available for all public repositories, and for private repositories owned by organizations that are part of an enterprise with a license for GitHub Advanced Security.

Configuring secret scanning

Secret scanning alerts for partners runs automatically on public repositories and public npm packages to notify service providers about leaked secrets on GitHub.com.

Secret scanning alerts for users are available for free on all public repositories. Organizations using GitHub Enterprise Cloud with a license for GitHub Advanced Security can also enable secret scanning alerts for users on their private and internal repositories. For more information, see "About secret scanning" and "About GitHub Advanced Security."

  1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.

  2. Click Code security & analysis.

  3. Next to Secret scanning, click Enable.

Setting a security policy

If you are a repository maintainer, it's good practice to specify a security policy for your repository by creating a file named SECURITY.md in the repository. This file instructs users about how to best contact you and collaborate with you when they want to report security vulnerabilities in your repository. You can view the security policy of a repository from the repository’s Security tab.

  1. From the main page of your repository, click Security.
  2. Click Security policy.
  3. Click Start setup.
  4. Add information about supported versions of your project and how to report vulnerabilities.

For more information, see "Adding a security policy to your repository."

Next steps

You can view and manage alerts from security features to address dependencies and vulnerabilities in your code. For more information, see "Viewing and updating Dependabot alerts," "Managing pull requests for dependency updates," "Managing code scanning alerts for your repository," and "Managing alerts from secret scanning".

You can also use GitHub's tools to audit responses to security alerts. For more information, see "Auditing security alerts".

If you have a security vulnerability, you can create a security advisory to privately discuss and fix the vulnerability. For more information, see "About repository security advisories" and "Creating a repository security advisory."