About this guide
As an organization owner, preventing exposure of private or sensitive data should be a top priority. Whether intentional or accidental, data leaks can cause substantial risk to the parties involved. While GitHub takes measures to help protect you against data leaks, you are also responsible for administering your organization to harden security.
There are several key components when it comes to defending against data leaks:
- Taking a proactive approach towards prevention
- Early detection of possible leaks
- Maintaining a mitigation plan when an incident occurs
The best approach will depend on the type of organization you're managing. For example, an organization that focuses on open source development might require looser controls than a fully commercial organization, to allow for external collaboration. This article provide high level guidance on the GitHub features and settings to consider, which you should implement according to your needs.
Secure accounts
Protect your organization's repositories and settings by implementing security best practices, including enabling 2FA and requiring it for all members, and establishing strong password guidelines.
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Requiring organization members, outside collaborators, and billing managers to enable 2FA for their personal accounts, making it harder for malicious actors to access an organization's repositories and settings. For more information, see Erfordern der zweistufigen Authentifizierung in deiner Organisation.
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Encouraging your users to create strong passwords and secure them appropriately, by following GitHub’s recommended password guidelines. For more information, see Ein sicheres Passwort erstellen.
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Encouraging your users to keep push protection for users enabled in their personal account settings, so that no matter which public repository they push to, they are protected. For more information, see Pushschutz für Benutzer.
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Establishing an internal security policy in GitHub, so users know the appropriate steps to take and who to contact if an incident is suspected. For more information, see Hinzufügen einer Sicherheitsrichtlinie für dein Repository.
For more detailed information about securing accounts, see Bewährte Methoden zum Schützen von Konten.
Prevent data leaks
As an organization owner, you should limit and review access as appropriate for the type of your organization. Consider the following settings for tighter control:
| Recommendation | More information |
|---|---|
| Disable the ability to fork repositories. | Verwalten der Forking-Richtlinie für dein Repository |
| Disable changing repository visibility. | Einschränken von Änderungen der Sichtbarkeit von Repositorys in deiner Organisation |
| Restrict repository creation to private or internal. | Einschränken der Repositoryerstellung in deiner Organisation |
| Disable repository deletion and transfer. | Berechtigungen zum Löschen oder Übertragen von Repositorys festlegen |
| Scope personal access tokens to the minimum permissions necessary. | None |
| Secure your code by converting public repositories to private whenever appropriate. You can alert the repository owners of this change automatically using a GitHub App. | Prevent-Public-Repos in GitHub Marketplace |
| Confirm your organization’s identity by verifying your domain and restricting email notifications to only verified email domains. | Überprüfen oder Genehmigen einer Domäne für deine Organisation |
| Ensure your organization has upgraded to the GitHub Customer Agreement instead of using the Standard Terms of Service. | Upgrade auf den GitHub-Kundenvereinbarung |
| Prevent contributors from making accidental commits. | Entfernen vertraulicher Daten aus einem Repository |
Detect data leaks
No matter how well you tighten your organization to prevent data leaks, some may still occur, and you can respond by using secret scanning, the audit log, and branch protection rules.
Use secret scanning
Secret scanning helps secure code and keep secrets safe across organizations and repositories by scanning and detecting secrets that were accidentally committed over the full Git history of every branch in GitHub repositories. Any strings that match patterns provided by secret scanning partners, by other service providers, or defined by you or your organization, are reported as alerts in the Security tab of repositories.
There are two forms of secret scanning available: Warnungen zur Geheimnisüberprüfung für Partner and Warnungen zur Geheimnisüberprüfung für Benutzer*innen.
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Warnungen zur Geheimnisüberprüfung für Partner: These are enabled by default and automatically run on all public repositories and public npm packages.
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Warnungen zur Geheimnisüberprüfung für Benutzerinnen: To get additional scanning capabilities for your organization, you need to enable Warnungen zur Geheimnisüberprüfung für Benutzerinnen.
When enabled, Warnungen zur Geheimnisüberprüfung für Benutzer*innen can be detected on the following types of repository:
- Public repositories owned by personal accounts on GitHub.com
- Public repositories owned by organizations
- Private and internal repositories owned by organizations using GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud, with a license for GitHub Code Security
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Regardless of the enablement status of secret scanning and push protection, organizations on GitHub Team and GitHub Enterprise can run a free report to scan the code in the organization for leaked secrets. See About secret security with GitHub.
For more information about secret scanning, see About secret scanning.
Du kannst secret scanning auch als Pushschutz für ein Repository oder eine Organisation aktivieren. Wenn du dieses Feature aktivierst, verhindert secret scanning, dass Mitwirkende Code mit einem erkannten Geheimnis pushen. For more information, see About push protection. Finally, you can also extend the detection to include custom secret string structures. For more information, see Definieren von benutzerdefinierten Mustern für die Geheimnisüberprüfung.
Review the audit log for your organization
You can also proactively secure IP and maintain compliance for your organization by leveraging your organization's audit log, along with the GraphQL Audit Log API. For more information, see Auditprotokoll deiner Organisation überprüfen and Schnittstellen.
Set up branch protection rules
To ensure that all code is properly reviewed prior to being merged into the default branch, you can enable branch protection. By setting branch protection rules, you can enforce certain workflows or requirements before a contributor can push changes. For more information, see Informationen zu geschützten Branches.
Alternativ zu den Regeln zum Schutz von Verzweigungen können Sie auch Regelsätze erstellen. Regelsätze haben einige Vorteile gegenüber branch Schutzregeln, wie z.B. Status und bessere Auffindbarkeit ohne Admin-Zugang. Sie können auch mehrere Regelsätze gleichzeitig anwenden. Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter Informationen zu Regelsätzen.
Mitigate data leaks
If a user pushes sensitive data, ask them to remove it by using the git filter-repo tool. For more information, see Entfernen vertraulicher Daten aus einem Repository. Also, if the sensitive data has not been pushed yet, you can just undo those changes locally; for more information, see the GitHub Blog (but note that git revert is not a valid way to undo the addition of sensitive data as it leaves the original sensitive commit in Git history).
If you're unable to coordinate directly with the repository owner to remove data that you're confident you own, you can fill out a DMCA takedown notice form and tell GitHub Support. Make sure to include the problematic commit hashes. For more information, see DMCA takedown notice.
Hinweis
If one of your repositories has been taken down due to a false claim, you should fill out a DMCA counter notice form and alert GitHub Support. For more information, see DMCA counter notice.
Revoke exposed tokens
If a personal access tokens has been exposed in a GitHub repository, GitHub secret scanning can be used to report and revoke the token. For more information, see Beheben von Warnungen aus der Geheimnisüberprüfung.
You can also revoke personal access tokens that you do not own and have been exposed outside of GitHub repositories. By doing this, you are contributing to the overall security of the GitHub community and can quickly limit the impact of these tokens. If you find exposed personal access tokens either on GitHub or elsewhere, you can submit a revocation request using the REST API. See Widerruf.