Introduction to GitHub Advanced Security
GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) is a comprehensive suite of security features designed to enhance the security posture of software development projects. Besides being tightly integrated with GitHub. GHAS is also available as an extension to Azure DevOps, providing similar capabilities on both platforms.
While GHAS is not designed to directly measure technical debt, its capabilities can greatly contribute to its discovery and remediation. GHAS offers code analysis, dependency management, and advanced code reviews along with security scanning services, such as code scanning, secret scanning, and dependency scanning. GHAS also provides detailed insights and recommendations to help prioritize and address security vulnerabilities.
By leveraging these features, organizations can proactively identify and address technical debt early in the development lifecycle. This reduces security risks, enhances code quality, and facilitates long-term maintainability of their software projects.
CodeQL analysis
CodeQL is a semantic code analysis engine that assists developers with identifying issues within their codebases. It provides a declarative query language designed to search for patterns that help identify coding errors and design flaws, all of which contribute to accumulation of technical debt. Its analytics capabilities can also be used to detect potential security vulnerabilities, such as injection flaws, authentication issues, and access control problems, which are often indicative of underlying technical debt.
Dependency management
Dependency management is critical for managing technical debt associated with outdated or vulnerable dependencies. GHAS dependency scanning provides visibility into project dependencies, including information on outdated packages, security vulnerabilities, and licensing issues. Dependabot can automatically update dependencies with security vulnerabilities, helping you keep your codebase up to date and secure.
Code scanning
Code scanning automatically scans code repositories for potential security vulnerabilities and coding errors, including code smells and anti-patterns, using a combination of static analysis techniques. It detects common security issues, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and buffer overflows, which, similarly to CodeQL-based analysis, commonly indicate technical debt resulting from insecure coding practices. In addition, Security Code Scanning provides actionable insights into code quality and security risks, helping prioritize and address technical debt in the most efficient and effective manner.