About GitHub Advanced Security

GitHub makes extra security features available to customers under an Advanced Security license.

Who can use this feature?

GitHub Advanced Security is available for enterprise accounts on GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise Server. For more information, see "GitHub’s plans."

For information about GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps, see Configure GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps in Microsoft Learn.

In this article

About GitHub Advanced Security

GitHub has many features that help you improve and maintain the quality of your code. Some of these are included in all plans, such as dependency graph and Dependabot alerts. Other security features require a GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS).

For information about buying a license for GitHub Advanced Security, see "About billing for GitHub Advanced Security."

Note

If you want to use GitHub Advanced Security with Azure Repos, see GitHub Advanced Security & Azure DevOps in our resources site. For documentation, see Configure GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps in Microsoft Learn.

About Advanced Security features

A GitHub Advanced Security license provides the following additional features:

  • Code scanning - Search for potential security vulnerabilities and coding errors in your code using CodeQL or a third-party tool. See "About code scanning" and "About code scanning with CodeQL."

  • CodeQL CLI - Run CodeQL processes locally on software projects or to generate code scanning results for upload to GitHub Enterprise Server. See "About the CodeQL CLI."

  • Secret scanning - Detect secrets, for example keys and tokens, that have been checked into the repository. If push protection is enabled, GitHub also detects secrets when they are pushed to your repository. See "About secret scanning" and "About push protection."

  • Custom auto-triage rules - Help you manage your Dependabot alerts at scale. With custom auto-triage rules you have control over the alerts you want to ignore, snooze, or trigger a Dependabot security update for. For more information, see "About Dependabot alerts" and "Customizing auto-triage rules to prioritize Dependabot alerts."

  • Dependency review - Show the full impact of changes to dependencies and see details of any vulnerable versions before you merge a pull request. See "About dependency review."

For information about Advanced Security features that are in development, see "GitHub public roadmap." For an overview of all security features, see "GitHub security features."

Deploying GitHub Advanced Security in your enterprise

To learn about what you need to know to plan your GitHub Advanced Security deployment at a high level and to review the rollout phases we recommended, see "Adopting GitHub Advanced Security at scale."

Enabling Advanced Security features

The site administrator must enable Advanced Security for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance before you can use these features. See "Managing GitHub Advanced Security for your enterprise."

Once your system is set up, you can enable and disable these features at the organization or repository level. See "Managing security and analysis settings for your organization" and "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository."

If you have an enterprise account, license use for the entire enterprise is shown on your enterprise license page. See "Viewing your GitHub Advanced Security usage."

Further reading