18 GitHub Security Best Practices for a Secured Repository

GitHub is an immensely popular collaboration tool for software development, but many forget to consider GitHub security and how it can ensure their repositories’ safety. This should be a priority, especially in an environment that values cyber security.

As organizations grow, keeping up with GitHub security practices can become increasingly tense. However, taking the time to configure GitHub security to its fullest is a necessary step towards ensuring safety from malicious attackers. The key is understanding and implementing GitHub security best practices today.

Let's examine why these 10 practices are important and how we can begin applying them. So let's get started on this journey together! Read more below.

Why Do You Need To Step Up Your GitHub Security Practices?

In this day and age, it is essential to take extra steps to ensure your GitHub security practices are up-to-date. Today, many rely heavily on our online data, making it especially important to implement robust security processes.

Therefore, the 5 takeaways on why you need to step up your GitHub security are:

1. More People Are Using GitHub

GitHub is a platform that allows developers to share code and collaborate on projects. It is the largest code repository in the world, with over 100 million users. Unfortunately, as GitHub has become more popular, it has become a target for hackers.

2. Hackers Can Exploit Vulnerabilities In Code

When code is shared on GitHub, it is made public. This means that anyone can view it, including hackers. Hackers can scan code for vulnerabilities that they can exploit. Exploiting these vulnerabilities can allow hackers to gain access to sensitive data or take control of systems.

3. Sensitive Data May Be Stored On GitHub

As more people use GitHub, more companies are using it to store sensitive data. This includes confidential information such as passwords, financial data, and customer information. If this data is exposed, it could be used to commit fraud or theft.

4. GitHub accounts can be hacked

Hackers can access GitHub accounts by exploiting the platform's vulnerabilities or stealing users' login credentials. Once they have access to an account, they can view and modify code, add malicious code to projects, or delete data.

5. You can take steps to protect your account and data

You can take several steps to protect your GitHub account and data from hackers. These include enabling two-factor authentication, using a strong password, and keeping your software up to date

To avoid such tragedies, it is imperative that you take steps to upgrade and maintain your GitHub security practices without any thoughts.

GitHub Security Best Practices For A Secured Repository

In order to ensure your GitHub repository is kept safe and secure, here are 20 key GitHub's best practices to consider:

1. Never Store Credentials And Sensitive Data On GitHub

Storing credentials and sensitive data on GitHub should always be avoided, as it can lead to catastrophic consequences because malicious thespians can take advantage of attacks like brute-forcing or phishing and compromise the security of the repositories.

Therefore, it is essential for developers to make sure that no confidential information is being stored on any public platform, including GitHub, even if the repository has some sort of access control system in place.

Developers should also use private version control software such as Gitea, Bitbucket, or Gitlab that provides integrated access controls, allowing them to keep their repositories safe and secure. By taking the additional responsibility to protect confidential information, developers are sure to reduce their security risks dramatically.

2. Manage Visibility

To protect a repository's visibility, developers should disable visibility changes on their repositories. This way, they can ensure that any changes made to the code are visible only to those with access privileges. By controlling who has access to view or modify the code and by disabling visibility changes, developers can better control their project's security.

3. Validate Your GitHub Applications

In order to get the most out of GitHub applications, it is essential to take the time to validate your code. Validation ensures that your code runs efficiently and without problems, reducing wasted time and effort in troubleshooting later. This process includes writing additional code snippets to confirm that your functions are working properly and will do what you expect when interacting with each other.

By validating your GitHub applications, you can ensure that you are always producing high-quality output that meets customer needs and expectations.

4. Enforce 2-Factor authentication

Enforcing two-factor authentication is an important step to ensuring secure access to data. It requires users to present two independent pieces of evidence, such as a password and a one-time use code sent via SMS or email, to log into the system. This double layer of security prevents unauthorized access even if a user's login credentials have been compromised or stolen.

Furthermore, two-factor authentication helps companies better meet security compliance requirements for passwords and enhances their overall data protection strategy. As such, organizations should use 2-factor authentication whenever possible due to its efficacy in guarding against data breaches and accidents.

5. Implement SSO (GitHub Enterprise Only)

Implementing Single Sign-On (SSO) with a GitHub Enterprise account provides organizations with increased security and convenience. SSO, in this context, automatically allows employees to access multiple applications using just one username and password. This could be a valuable asset for enterprises with high employee turnover or multiple systems needing access. As memories of old passwords can be practically eliminated.

With SSO enabled, no new accounts need to be created each time an employee is on-boarded or transferred, making it quick and easy to do so. What's more, single sign-on technology salvages the time of your system administrators when managing many user accounts simultaneously — simply manage them once for all future usages across multiple apps!

6. Tightly Manage External Contributor Permissions

Managing permissions for external contributors is an important step in ensuring the security of your company's data. Regarding external contributors — think freelance contractors, vendors, and partners — it's important to give them only access to what they absolutely need to complete their task. Avoid granting too many permissions, as this will increase the risk of a data breach or issue.

It's also best practice to periodically review accounts and delete any external contributor who is no longer active to reduce this risk further. Finally, establishing clear rules that carefully outline which tasks are allowed from which platforms can help keep your business safe from potential cyberattacks. By tightly managing external contributor access, your data remains secure and safeguarded against vulnerabilities.

7. Revoke Permissions Promptly

Securing an organization's data starts with properly managing permissions. Security administrators should make it a habit to review and update user permissions regularly. Doing so ensures that users have the level of access needed to do their work, but no more than necessary. After any changes are made or personnel shifts occur, administrators should revoke any superfluous permissions immediately.

Waiting too long to make changes can lead to unauthorized access and put the organization at risk of increased potential liability. Therefore, properly managing permissions is critical for any security policy and should be carefully monitored by qualified staff members.

8. Require Commit Signing

Require commit signing is an incredibly valuable tool for software development teams. Through this process, developers must digitally sign each code commit or patch they make to the project before merging it with the main repository.

This serves as an integrity check and provides a unique identifier for the committed change. It allows other developers to more easily understand who made what changes and when they were pushed. Signing off on commits also encourages developers to think carefully about any updates they make since their name will be associated with it, which helps improve code quality overall.

9. Enforce Code Review Before Commit

By instituting a policy of always doing a code review before committing changes, teams can avoid many of the costly problems associated with unverified code changes. This can include anything from introducing potential bugs and security vulnerabilities to writing inefficient code slowing down systems over time.

In addition, code reviews ensure that all changes meet an agreed-upon level of quality and that any discrepancies can be discussed between multiple members. Rather than becoming individual points of contention. Enforcing code reviews helps teams ensure they put their best foot forward when creating robust production-quality software.

10. Add A Security.md File

Security is essential for any website and security.md file can help protect your website from malicious online activity. Security.md file should include basic information about

11. Rotate SSH Keys And Personal Access Tokens

Rotating SSH Keys and Personal Access Tokens regularly is an essential cybersecurity practice. By regularly changing these credentials, businesses can be sure attackers won't gain access to their systems even if the original key or token were compromised.

Rotating them also reduces the amount of time that unauthorized users could be present in a system since they'd need to refresh their access with every new credential issued by the organization. Rotating SSH Keys and Personal Access Tokens should be part of any organization's defense-in-depth plan to ensure only authorized users gain access to their network or applications.

12. Audit All Code Uploaded To GitHub

In recent years, many companies have been turning to GitHub as an efficient source code repository. But in doing so, many organizations have neglected the importance of auditing that code.

In order to ensure their software and systems remain secure, companies need to audit any code uploaded onto their GitHub repositories for any malicious elements or potential security risks. This helps keep their networks safe from attack but also helps maintain compliance with industry regulations regarding data protection.

13. Review Your GitHub Audit Logs For Suspicious Activity

When reviewing your GitHub audit logs, it's important to watch for suspicious activity. Common signs of malicious behavior can include login attempts from:

All of these indicate that your account could be the target of a cyberattack. Therefore, monitoring the audit log regularly is essential to avoid potential threats and protect your valuable data from unauthorized access.

14. Enable Alerts For Vulnerable Dependencies

Enabling alerts for vulnerable dependencies should be a priority for any business using open-source components in its applications. As hackers become more sophisticated, the risks associated with high-profile open-source vulnerabilities continue to increase. Knowing about potential security issues as soon as possible can help you stay ahead of the game and create a secure environment for your customers.

By setting up alerts from sources like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), you can get notified when new threats are identified and respond quickly to them without putting yourself at risk. Additionally, monitoring service providers can help automate this process, reducing your chances of falling victim to malicious actors!

15. Employ Automated Secret Scanning At Pre-Commit

Automated secret scanning at pre-commit can be a great security automated solution for organizations to detect potential vulnerabilities before they are committed. This scanning process test commits against common credential formats like API keys and passwords to check for any public or unprotected access.

Moreover, it alerts organization administrators about vulnerable source code, open source nodes, or libraries with known security defects. As a result, organizations can take proactive actions to fix the issues before they cause any severe damage. Automated secret scanning is also cost-effective and time-saving as developers no longer have to worry about manually reviewing each commit one by one.

16. Clear Your GitHub History

Keeping your GitHub history clear is essential for maintaining a professional online presence. It allows visitors to quickly and easily gain an understanding of your technical abilities, as well as the projects you have worked on. In addition, diagnosing coding issues can be more difficult if you don't frequently delete redundant code or test commits that don't need to be included in the master branch.

Additionally, it allows other developers to review your work without scrolling through thousands of unnecessary files and data. By regularly clearing out code that isn't needed, you keep your GitHub profile clean and free from the clutter that could potentially confuse potential clients or employers.

17. Enable Git Branch Protection

Branch protection can be a powerful tool in Git, allowing users to establish a secure repository architecture with greater control. By enabling branch protection, users are able to define specific permissions and requirements on their branches. Such as, stipulating that at least two reviews must be conducted before merging pull requests or disabling force pushes.

This is especially useful when working in larger teams because it provides an additional layer of standardization. This is mostly in regard to the accepting protocols that must be followed, ensuring that everyone has had the opportunity to review any changes before they're officially established.

It also prevents malicious actors from making unwanted changes by requiring strict authentication for user accounts before granting access. All-in-all, enabling branch protection is an excellent way to create a secure repository environment and maintain control over all aspects of the development process.

18. Add Sensitive Files To .gitignore

A .gitignore file enables us to do just that by specifying the types of files that should not be committed to the repository.

For example, any credential or configuration information for a third-party service, like your database or an API key, should be listed in .gitignore so that only the development team can access these details. By committing this file to a project's repository, you risk exposing these credentials to anyone who clones the repository and puts your application's data at risk.

Therefore, all sensitive files must be added to .gitignore before pushing any changes to a code repo.

Why Should You Amp Up Your GitHub Security Measures?

It has never been more important than now to amp up your GitHub security measures. While many people may be familiar with social media security, such as changing passwords often, the same goes for hosting a publicly accessible repository.

Additionally, password managers are an important tool for saving account credentials and increasing the security of our accounts. Here are 5 reasons why It is essential to amp up your GitHub security.

1. Protect Your Code

Protecting your code is one of the most important reasons to amp up your GitHub security measures. If your code is stored in a public repository, it is vulnerable to being copied or modified without your permission. By securing your repositories, you can help ensure that your code remains safe and under your control.

2. Reduce The Risk Of Attack

Another reason to improve your GitHub security is to reduce the attack risk. Hackers can use vulnerabilities in public repositories to gain access to sensitive information or launch attacks against other users. You can help protect yourself and other users from these attacks by ensuring that your repositories are secure.

3. Maintain Your Reputation

Another important reason to keep your GitHub repositories secure is to maintain your reputation. If hackers can gain access to your code, they could make changes that could damage your reputation or cause harm to other users. By taking steps to secure your repositories, you can help to ensure that your reputation remains intact.

4. Comply With Regulations

Sometimes, you may be required to comply with regulations to secure your code. For example, if you are developing code for a healthcare application, you may be required by HIPAA regulations to take steps to protect patient data. By securing your repositories, you can help ensure that you comply with these regulations.

5. Protect Your Jobsite From Spammers And Malicious Users

If you use GitHub for work, it is important to secure your repositories to protect your job site from spammers and malicious users. These users can use vulnerabilities in public repositories to gain access to sensitive information or launch attacks against other users.

Secure Your GitHub Repo For Free With Scantist

GitHub security best practices are essential for protecting your repositories from malicious attacks and keeping cyber criminals at bay. Taking the steps to properly configure your security settings, deploying automated secret scanning, and maintaining audit logs can help you stay safe in an ever-evolving digital world.

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