Applying the GitHub-recommended security configuration to your enterprise

Secure your code with the security enablement settings created, managed, and recommended by GitHub.

Who can use this feature?

Enterprise owners and members with the admin role

In this article

The GitHub-recommended security configuration is a set of industry best practices and features that provide a robust, baseline security posture for enterprises. This configuration is created and maintained by subject matter experts at GitHub, with the help of multiple industry leaders and experts. The GitHub-recommended security configuration is designed to successfully reduce the security risks for low- and high-impact repositories. We recommend you apply this configuration to all the repositories in your enterprise.

Warning

GitHub may add new features to the GitHub-recommended security configuration without warning. If you have concerns and prefer to test out features before they are turned on, we suggest you do not use the GitHub-recommended security configuration.

Applying the GitHub-recommended security configuration to repositories in your enterprise

  1. In the top-right corner of GitHub, click your profile photo.

  2. Depending on your environment, click Your enterprise, or click Your enterprises then click the enterprise you want to view.

  3. On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click Settings.

  4. In the left sidebar, click Code security.

  5. In the "GitHub recommended" row of the configurations table for your enterprise, select the Apply to dropdown menu, then click All repositories or All repositories without configurations.

  6. Optionally, in the confirmation dialog, you can choose to automatically apply the security configuration to newly created repositories depending on their visibility. Select the None dropdown menu, then click Public, or Private and internal, or both.

  7. To apply the security configuration, click Apply.

The security configuration is applied to both active and archived repositories because some security features run on archived repositories, for example, secret scanning. In addition, if a repository is later unarchived you can be confident that it is protected by the chosen security configuration.

If security configurations fail to apply to some organizations in your enterprise, GitHub will display a banner on the UI to let you know. You can click the links on the banner to get more information about the organizations and repositories involved.

  1. In the top-right corner of GitHub, click your profile photo.
  2. Depending on your environment, click Your enterprise, or click Your enterprises then click the enterprise you want to view.
  3. On the left side of the page, in the enterprise account sidebar, click Settings.
  4. In the left sidebar, click Code security.
  5. In the "Configurations" section, select "GitHub recommended".
  6. In the "Policy" section, next to "Enforce configuration", select Enforce from the dropdown menu.

Note

If a user in your enterprise attempts to change the enablement status of a feature in an enforced configuration using the REST API, the API call will appear to succeed, but no enablement statuses will change.

Some situations can break the enforcement of security configurations for a repository. For example, the enablement of code scanning will not apply to a repository if:

  • GitHub Actions is initially enabled on the repository, but is then disabled in the repository.
  • GitHub Actions required by code scanning configurations are not available in the repository.
  • The definition for which languages should not be analyzed using code scanning default setup is changed.