Github Configuration Best Practices

Leo Migdal

-Dec 4, 2025, 11:17 AM

Secure your code with the security enablement settings created, managed, and recommended by GitHub. Enterprise owners and members with the admin role The GitHub-recommended security configuration is a set of industry best practices and features that provide a robust, baseline security posture for enterprises. This configuration is created and maintained by subject matter experts at GitHub, with the help of multiple industry leaders and experts. The GitHub-recommended security configuration is designed to successfully reduce the security risks for low- and high-impact repositories. We recommend you apply this configuration to all the repositories in your enterprise.

The GitHub-recommended security configuration includes GitHub Code Security and GitHub Secret Protection features. Applying the configuration to private and internal repositories will incur usage costs or require GHAS licenses. For more information, see About GitHub Advanced Security. GitHub may add new features to the GitHub-recommended security configuration without warning. If you have concerns and prefer to test out features before they are turned on, we suggest you do not use the GitHub-recommended security configuration. GitHub is a collaborative source code management platform that plays a critical role in modern software development, providing a central repository for storing, managing, and versioning source code as well as collaborating with a...

However, it also represent a potential security risk if not properly configured. In this guide, we will explore the best practices for securing GitHub, covering topics that include user authentication, access control, permissions, monitoring, logging, and integrating security tools. Did you know that over 83% of organizations experienced at least one successful application exploit in the last 12 months? This statistic from a recent cybersecurity report highlights the critical importance of securing our code repositories and development workflows. As the world's leading platform for version control and collaboration, GitHub has an important role in the software development life cycle for millions of developers and organizations. In this guide, we'll explore nine essential GitHub security best practices that will help you protect your code, your team, and your users in 2024 and beyond.

One of the most fundamental steps in securing your GitHub organization account and repositories is enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). This simple yet powerful security measure adds an extra layer of protection beyond just your password. The screenshot shows the GitHub dashboard with the "Account Settings" section open. It highlights user account options and configuration settings that are available for customization. The above screenshot showcases the GitHub dashboard with the Settings option prominently highlighted. This section allows users to manage their account preferences and configure various settings related to their GitHub profile.

2. Click on "Password and authentication" Posted on Feb 7, 2024 • Edited on Nov 13 As a DevOps engineer, managing GitHub repositories is as crucial as the code they contain. A well-maintained Github repo sets the stage for effective collaboration, code quality, and streamlined workflows. In this blog, we'll discuss and look at my top 10 tips for best practices in managing GitHub repositories effectively.

A clear repository naming convention in GitHub is a vital as it helps with organisation and clarity, which are crucial in a collaborative environment. A clear repository naming convention makes it easier to: By adhering to a clear and standardised repository naming convention, you ensure that everyone on the team can navigate repositories more efficiently, anticipate the nature and content of each repository before delving into it,... This ultimately leads to better collaboration, time-saving, and fewer mistakes, allowing teams to focus on building and deploying rather than being bogged down with organisational confusion. Code security configurations simplify the rollout of GitHub security products at scale by defining collections of security settings that can be applied to groups of repositories. Your organization can apply the ‘GitHub recommended’ security configuration, which applies GitHub’s suggested settings for Dependabot, secret scanning, and code scanning.

Alternatively, you can instead create your own custom security configurations. For example, an organization could create a ‘High risk’ security configuration for production repositories, and a ‘Minimum protection’ security configuration for internal repositories. This lets you manage security settings based on different risk profiles and security needs. Your organization can also set a default security configuration which is automatically applied to new repositories, avoiding any gaps in your coverage. With security configurations, you can also see the additional number of GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) licenses that are required to apply a configuration, or made available by disabling GHAS features on selected repositories. This lets you understand license usage when you roll out GitHub’s code security features in your organization.

Security configurations are now available in public beta on GitHub.com, and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.15. You can learn more about security configurations or send us your feedback. Learn how to use repositories effectively and securely. To make it easier for people to understand and navigate your work, we recommend that you create a README file for every repository. You can add a README file to a repository to communicate important information about your project. A README, along with a repository license, citation file, contribution guidelines, and a code of conduct, communicates expectations for your project and helps you manage contributions.

For more information, see About the repository README file. You should secure your repository using GitHub's available security features to protect your code from vulnerabilities, unauthorized access, and other potential security threats. At a minimum, you should enable the following features, which are available for free for public repositories: For more information, see Quickstart for securing your repository. A quick-start guide to less frustration and better workflows. Rose Judge // Senior Open Source Engineer, VMware

The ReadME Project amplifies the voices of the open source community: the maintainers, developers, and teams whose contributions move the world forward every day. In my two years as an open source maintainer, I have found that the biggest barrier for newcomers participating in open source is not actually the coding part. In fact, Tern gets lots of Python programmers who know what changes are required in the code. The biggest barrier to entry I’ve seen is the Git workflow surrounding opening and updating a pull request. While opening a new pull request (PR) is a fairly straightforward process, updating that same PR can be difficult if your repository is not set up properly. This comes as no surprise to me because when I first started contributing to open source, the hardest part of getting started was trying to understand how I could make Git do what I...

I still remember being asked to update one of my first PRs and, despite my best efforts searching all corners of the internet, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I ended up closing the pull request, re-cloning my fork, and opening an entirely new pull request 🤦‍♀️ . The good news is that by the end of reading this article you won’t have to go through the same struggles I did. Adopting GitHub’s general platform best practices is crucial for effectively managing software development projects. These practices provide a structured framework that ensures projects are secure, maintainable, and scalable. By fostering a collaborative and efficient environment, these guidelines help organizations avoid common pitfalls, maintain high-quality codebases, and streamline project workflows.

Ultimately, adhering to these best practices leads to successful and sustainable software projects. Use these key strategies as a baseline to implement GitHub’s best practices for governance: Restrict Actions execution to specific repositories and not let repo users and owners to arbitrarily create and execute actions workflow. Set this at the Organization level. Use Actions created by GitHub and Verified Creators wherever applicable. This settings can be enforced at Enterprise level.

Default Workflow token permission should be read-only: Following the principle of least privilege, it is recommended to set the default workflow token permissions to read-only. Default is read/write, which should be avoided because if a token is compromised, malicious actors can run exploits within the GitHub platform through actions execution. Find out which type of security configuration will meet the security needs of the repositories in your organization. Organization owners, security managers, and organization members with the admin role Security configurations are collections of enablement settings for GitHub's security features that you can apply to any repository within your organization. GitHub offers two types of security configurations:

We recommend that organizations initially apply the GitHub-recommended security configuration. After you have applied the GitHub-recommended security configuration to repositories in your organization, you can evaluate the security findings for each repository and determine if you instead want to create and apply a custom... Currently, only one security configuration can be applied to a repository at a time.

Github Configuration Best Practices

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