Quickstart for securing your repository

Introduction

This guide shows you how to configure security features for a repository. You must be a repository administrator or organization owner to configure security settings for a repository.

Your security needs are unique to your repository, so you may not need to enable every feature for your repository. For more information, see GitHub security features.

Some features are available for all repositories. Additional features are available to enterprises that use GitHub Advanced Security. For more information, see "About GitHub Advanced Security."

Managing access to your repository

The first step to securing a repository is to establish who can see and modify your code. For more information, see Managing your repository’s settings and features.

From the main page of your repository, click Settings, then scroll down to the "Danger Zone."

• To change who can view your repository, click Change visibility. For more information, see Setting repository visibility.
• To change who can access your repository and adjust permissions, click Manage access. For more information, seeManaging teams and people with access to your repository.

Managing the dependency graph

Enterprise owners can configure the dependency graph and Dependabot alerts for an enterprise. For more information, see "Enabling the dependency graph for your enterprise" and "Enabling Dependabot for your enterprise."

For more information, see Exploring the dependencies of a repository.

Managing Dependabot alerts

Dependabot alerts are generated when GitHub identifies a dependency in the dependency graph with a vulnerability.

For an overview of the different features offered by Dependabot and instructions on how to get started, see "Dependabot quickstart guide."

Enterprise owners must configure the dependency graph and Dependabot alerts for an enterprise.

Once Dependabot alerts have been configured, repository administrators and organization owners can enable Dependabot alerts for private and internal repositories in their "Code security and analysis" settings page. Public repositories are enabled by default. For more information, see "Enabling the dependency graph for your enterprise", "Enabling Dependabot for your enterprise," and "Configuring Dependabot alerts."

For more information, see About Dependabot alerts.

Managing dependency review

Dependency review lets you visualize dependency changes in pull requests before they are merged into your repositories. For more information, see About dependency review.

Dependency review is a GitHub Advanced Security feature. To enable dependency review for a repository, ensure that the dependency graph is enabled and enable GitHub Advanced Security.

1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
2. Click Code security and analysis.
3. Check that dependency graph is configured for your enterprise.
4. If GitHub Advanced Security is not already enabled, click Enable.

Managing Dependabot security updates

For any repository that uses Dependabot alerts, you can enable Dependabot security updates to raise pull requests with security updates when vulnerabilities are detected.

1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
2. Click Code security and analysis.
3. Next to Dependabot security updates, click Enable.

For more information, see About Dependabot security updates and Configuring Dependabot security updates.

Managing Dependabot version updates

You can enable Dependabot to automatically raise pull requests to keep your dependencies up-to-date. For more information, see About Dependabot version updates.

To enable Dependabot version updates, you must create a dependabot.yml configuration file. For more information, see Configuring Dependabot version updates.

Configuring code scanning

You can configure code scanning to automatically identify vulnerabilities and errors in the code stored in your repository by using a CodeQL analysis workflow or third-party tool. Depending on the programming languages in your repository, you can configure code scanning with CodeQL using default setup, in which GitHub automatically determines the languages to scan, query suites to run, and events that will trigger a new scan. For more information, see Configuring default setup for code scanning.

1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.
2. In the "Security" section of the sidebar, click Code security and analysis.
3. In the "Code scanning" section, select Set up , then click Default.
4. In the pop-up window that appears, review the default configuration settings for your repository, then click Enable CodeQL.

Alternatively, you can use advanced setup, which generates a workflow file you can edit to customize your code scanning with CodeQL. For more information, see Configuring advanced setup for code scanning.

Configuring secret scanning

Secret scanning is available for the following repositories:

• Organization-owned repositories with GitHub Advanced Security enabled
• for an enterprise with GitHub Advanced Security enabled

1. From the main page of your repository, click Settings.

2. Click Code security and analysis.

3. If GitHub Advanced Security is not already enabled, click Enable.

4. Next to Secret scanning, click Enable.

Setting a security policy

If you are a repository maintainer, it's good practice to specify a security policy for your repository by creating a file named SECURITY.md in the repository. This file instructs users about how to best contact you and collaborate with you when they want to report security vulnerabilities in your repository. You can view the security policy of a repository from the repository’s Security tab.

1. From the main page of your repository, click Security.
2. Click Security policy.
3. Click Start setup.
4. Add information about supported versions of your project and how to report vulnerabilities.

For more information, see Adding a security policy to your repository.

Next steps

You can view and manage alerts from security features to address dependencies and vulnerabilities in your code. For more information, see Viewing and updating Dependabot alerts, Managing pull requests for dependency updates, Assessing code scanning alerts for your repository, and Managing alerts from secret scanning.

You can also use GitHub's tools to audit responses to security alerts. For more information, see Auditing security alerts.

If you use GitHub Actions, you can use GitHub's security features to increase the security of your workflows. For more information, see Using GitHub's security features to secure your use of GitHub Actions.