Enabling delegated alert dismissal for secret scanning

You can use delegated alert dismissal to control who can dismiss an alert found by secret scanning.

Who can use this feature?

Organization owners, security managers, and repository administrators can enable delegated alert dismissals. Once enabled, organization owners and security managers can dismiss alerts.

In this article

About enabling delegated alert dismissal

Note

The ability to use delegated alert dismissal for secret scanning is currently in public preview and subject to change.

Delegated alert dismissal lets you restrict which users can directly dismiss an alert. When enabled, users attempting to dismiss an alert will instead create a request for dismissal. When this happens, security managers and organization owners will be notified via email so they can review the request and approve it or deny it. The alert will only be dismissed if the dismissal request is approved; otherwise, the alert will remain open.

When you enable this feature, only security managers and organization owners will be able to approve or deny dismissal requests for alerts. This might create friction and you should ensure to have sufficient coverage in your security managers team before you start.

In addition, dismissal request emails are sent to all organization owners and security managers. Be sure to review these lists periodically to ensure that these are the correct people to take action on these requests.

To learn more about the security manager role, see Managing security managers in your organization.

Configuring delegated dismissal for a repository

Note

If an organization owner configures delegated alert dismissal via an enforced security configuration, the settings can't be changed at the repository level.

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

  2. Under your repository name, click Settings. If you cannot see the "Settings" tab, select the dropdown menu, then click Settings.

    Screenshot of a repository header showing the tabs. The "Settings" tab is highlighted by a dark orange outline.

  3. In the "Security" section of the sidebar, click Code security.

  4. Under "Code security", find "GitHub Advanced Security."

  5. Under "Secret scanning", toggle the option "Prevent direct alert dismissals".

Configuring delegated dismissal for an organization

You must configure delegated dismissal for your organization using a custom security configuration. You can then apply the security configuration to all (or selected) repositories in your organization.

  1. Create a new custom security configuration, or edit an existing one. See Creating a custom security configuration.
  2. When creating the custom security configuration, under "Secret scanning", ensure that the dropdown menus for "Alerts" and "Prevent direct alert dismissals" are set to Enabled.
  3. Click Save configuration.
  4. Apply the security configuration to all (or selected) repositories in your organization. See Applying a custom security configuration.

To learn more about security configurations, see About enabling security features at scale.