About GitHub Advanced Security

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 GitHub Advanced Security to run on repositories apart from public repositories on GitHub.com.

To purchase a GitHub Advanced Security license, you must be using GitHub Enterprise. For information about upgrading to GitHub Enterprise with GitHub Advanced Security, see "GitHub's products" and "About billing for GitHub Advanced Security."

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. For more information, see "About code scanning."

• Secret scanning - Detect secrets, for example keys and tokens, that have been checked into the repository. For more information, see "About secret scanning."

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

The table below summarizes the availability of GitHub Advanced Security features for public and private repositories.

	Public repository	Private repository without Advanced Security	Private repository with Advanced Security
Code scanning	Yes	No	Yes
Secret scanning	Yes (limited functionality only)	No	Yes
Dependency review	Yes	No	Yes

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."

GitHub Advanced Security features are enabled for all public repositories on GitHub.com. Organizations that use GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Advanced Security can additionally enable these features for private and internal repositories. They also have access to an organization-level security overview. For more information, see the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

About starter workflows for Advanced Security

GitHub provides starter workflows for security features such as code scanning. You can use these suggested workflows to construct your code scanning workflows, instead of starting from scratch.

For more information on starter workflows, see "Setting up code scanning using starter workflows" and "Using starter workflows."