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Managing alerts from secret scanning

In this article

You can view and close alerts for secrets checked in to your repository.

Secret scanning for advanced security is available for organization-owned repositories in GitHub Enterprise Cloud if your enterprise has a license for GitHub Advanced Security. For more information, see "GitHub's products."

Managing secret scanning alerts

Note: Alerts are created only for repositories with secret scanning for advanced security enabled. Secrets found in public repositories using the free secret scanning for partner patterns service are reported directly to the partner, without creating an alert.

  1. On GitHub.com, navigate to the main page of the repository.

  2. Under your repository name, click Security. Security tab

  3. In the left sidebar, click Secret scanning alerts.

    "Secret scanning alerts" tab

  4. Under "Secret scanning" click the alert you want to view.

    List of alerts from secret scanning

  5. Optionally, select the "Close as" drop-down menu and click a reason for resolving an alert.

    Drop-down menu for resolving an alert from secret scanning

Securing compromised secrets

Once a secret has been committed to a repository, you should consider the secret compromised. GitHub recommends the following actions for compromised secrets:

  • For a compromised GitHub personal access token, delete the compromised token, create a new token, and update any services that use the old token. For more information, see "Creating a personal access token for the command line."
  • For all other secrets, first verify that the secret committed to GitHub Enterprise Cloud is valid. If so, create a new secret, update any services that use the old secret, and then delete the old secret.

Note: If a secret is detected in a public repository on GitHub.com and the secret also matches a partner pattern, an alert is generated and the potential secret is reported to the service provider. For details of partner patterns, see "Supported secrets for partner patterns."

Configuring notifications for secret scanning alerts

When a new secret is detected, GitHub Enterprise Cloud notifies all users with access to security alerts for the repository according to their notification preferences. You will receive an email notification if you are watching the repository, have enabled notifications for security alerts or for all the activity on the repository, or are the author of the commit that contains the secret and are not ignoring the repository.

For more information, see "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository" and "Configuring notifications."