GitHub Advanced Security is a comprehensive, developer-first application security solution integrated into the GitHub platform, designed to modernize and enhance how application security is implemented across organizations.
What GitHub Advanced Security Does
GitHub Advanced Security is aimed at accelerating the delivery of secure software by providing cutting-edge tools for static analysis, software composition analysis, and secret scanning. It seamlessly integrates with the GitHub platform, making it easier for developers to identify and fix vulnerabilities early in the software development life cycle. This approach helps security leaders address compliance requirements while empowering development teams to deliver secure software more efficiently.
Key Features and Functionality
Code Scanning
GitHub Advanced Security includes code scanning, which uses static application security testing (SAST) to automatically detect security vulnerabilities and coding errors in new or modified code. This feature leverages tools like CodeQL to highlight potential problems, providing detailed information to help developers fix issues before the code is merged into the default branch.
Secret Scanning
Secret scanning is another crucial feature that detects tokens, credentials, and other secrets checked into repositories. It supports over 200 token types and patterns from more than 150 service providers, including passwords and personally identifiable information (PII). Push protection is also available, which detects secrets as they are pushed to the repository, helping prevent unauthorized access and breaches.
Dependency Review
This feature provides a detailed analysis of changes to dependencies, showing the full impact of these changes and highlighting any vulnerable versions before a pull request is merged. This helps in maintaining the security of the dependency chain.
Custom Auto-Triage Rules
For managing Dependabot alerts at scale, GitHub Advanced Security offers custom auto-triage rules. These rules allow users to control which alerts to ignore, snooze, or trigger a Dependabot security update for, helping in prioritizing and managing security alerts efficiently.
Autofixes and Security Campaigns
The solution includes autofix capabilities, such as those provided by GitHub Copilot Autofix, which detect vulnerabilities, provide contextual explanations, and suggest fixes directly in pull requests or for historical alerts. Security campaigns can also target and generate autofixes for up to 1,000 alerts at a time, significantly reducing the risk of application vulnerabilities and zero-day attacks.
Integration and Management
GitHub Advanced Security can be easily enabled and managed at the organization or repository level. It offers a GitHub-recommended security configuration that can be applied to repositories, and features can be further customized with global settings. Additionally, features can be enabled or disabled via the API, providing flexible management options for enterprises.
Availability and Licensing
GitHub Advanced Security is available for enterprise accounts on GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise Server. Some features are also enabled for public repositories on GitHub.com. Organizations can try GitHub Advanced Security for free and then purchase a license to extend these features to their private and internal repositories.
In summary, GitHub Advanced Security enhances the security posture of organizations by integrating robust security tools directly into the development workflow, making it easier for developers to secure their code, manage dependencies, and protect sensitive information.
