GitLab Compliance - Hands-On Lab: Scan Execution Policies

This Hands-On Guide walks you through enabling and using Scan Execution Policies in your projects.

Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

Objectives

Scan execution policies allow you to run security scans against projects and groups in a consistent manner. In this lab, you will learn how to add a scan execution policy to your project.

Task A. Create a scan execution policy

In the left sidebar, select Secure > Policies.
Select New policy.
Under Scan execution policy, select Select policy.
In the name, input run scan.
In the Actions, set the scan to run a Secret Detection scan. Leave all action configurations at default.
In the Conditions section, set to Triggers: for all branches with No exceptions.
Select Configure with a Merge Request.
Select Merge.

Task B. Testing your scan execution policy

Navigate back to your Compliance Project project.
Select + > New file.
Enter anything for the Filename and file contents.
Select Commit changes.
Select Create Merge Request.
Review the Merge Request pipeline. Note that there is now a secret detection scan job.

Lab Guide Complete

You have completed this lab exercise. You can view the other lab guides for this course.

Suggestions?

If you wish to make a change to the lab, please submit your changes via Merge Request.

Last modified October 23, 2025: Update Suggestions to be Uniform (0c39f0dd)

View page source - Edit this page - please contribute.