About GitHub Connect

About GitHub Connect

GitHub Connect enhances GitHub AE by allowing your enterprise to benefit from the power of GitHub.com in limited ways. After you enable GitHub Connect, you can enable additional features and workflows that rely on GitHub.com, such as Dependabot alerts for security vulnerabilities that are tracked in the GitHub Advisory Database.

GitHub Connect does not open your enterprise to the public internet. None of your enterprise's private data is exposed to GitHub.com users. Instead, GitHub Connect transmits only the limited data needed for the individual features you choose to enable. Unless you enable license sync, no personal data is transmitted by GitHub Connect. For more information about what data is transmitted by GitHub Connect, see "Data transmission for GitHub Connect."

Enabling GitHub Connect will not allow GitHub.com users to make changes to GitHub AE.

To enable GitHub Connect, you configure a connection between your enterprise and enterprise account on GitHub.com that uses GitHub Enterprise Cloud. The connection uses HTTPS over ports 443 or 80 and is secured by TLS. For more information, see "Managing GitHub Connect."

After enabling GitHub Connect, you will be able to enable features such as Dependabot alerts. For more information about all of the features available, see "GitHub Connect features."

GitHub Connect features

After you configure the connection between your enterprise and GitHub Enterprise Cloud, you can enable individual features of GitHub Connect for your enterprise.

Feature	Description	More information
Dependabot	Allow users to find and fix vulnerabilities in code dependencies.	"Enabling Dependabot for your enterprise"
GitHub.com actions	Allow users to use actions from GitHub.com in public workflow files.	"Enabling automatic access to GitHub.com actions using GitHub Connect"
Unified search	Allow users to include repositories on GitHub.com in their search results when searching from your enterprise.	"Enabling unified search for your enterprise"
Unified contributions	Allow users to include anonymized contribution counts for their work on your enterprise in their contribution graphs on GitHub.com.	"Enabling unified contributions for your enterprise"

Data transmission for GitHub Connect

When GitHub Connect is enabled, a record on GitHub Enterprise Cloud stores information about the connection. If you enable individual features of GitHub Connect, additional data is transmitted.

Data transmitted when GitHub Connect is enabled

When you enable GitHub Connect or specific GitHub Connect features, a record on GitHub Enterprise Cloud stores the following information about the connection.

• The hostname of your enterprise
• The enterprise account on GitHub Enterprise Cloud that's connected to your enterprise
• The authentication token that's used by your enterprise to make requests to GitHub Enterprise Cloud
• If Transport Layer Security (TLS) is enabled and configured on your enterprise
• The dormancy threshold for your enterprise
• The number of dormant users for your enterprise
• A count of license-consuming seats, which does not include suspended users

GitHub Connect syncs the above connection data between your enterprise and GitHub Enterprise Cloud weekly, starting from the day and approximate time that GitHub Connect was enabled.

Data transmitted by individual features of GitHub Connect

Additional data is transmitted if you enable individual features of GitHub Connect.

Feature	Data	Which way does the data flow?	Where is the data used?
Dependabot alerts	Vulnerability alerts	From GitHub.com to GitHub AE	GitHub AE
GitHub.com actions	Name of action, action (YAML file from GitHub Marketplace)	From GitHub.com to GitHub AE From GitHub AE to GitHub.com	GitHub AE
Unified search	Search terms, search results	From GitHub.com to GitHub AE From GitHub AE to GitHub.com	GitHub AE
Unified contributions	Contribution counts	From GitHub AE to GitHub.com	GitHub.com

Further reading

• "Managing enterprise accounts" in the GraphQL API documentation