GitGuardian alternatives: GitHub Advanced Security vs GitGuardian

Hey there! If you’re deep in the research process of choosing a new git secrets scanning solution then you’re probably looking to compare GitGuardian with other options to determine whether it might be right for you. To help make this as easy as possible, we’ve put together a detailed overview of how GitGuardian Internal Monitoring stacks up to GitHub’s secret scanning.

Before we dive into the comparison of the main features we first need to acknowledge the difference in business models between GitHub Advanced Security and GitGuardian Internal Monitoring.

The difference in business models

GitHub’s security features, including secret scanning, are covered under the GitHub Advanced Security license. This is an additional product in addition to a standard GitHub Enterprise license. Currently, there are three security categories covered in GitHub’s Advanced Security, these are:

Code scanning
Secret scanning (beta version)
Dependency review (beta version)

An advantage of purchasing GitHub’s Advanced Security license is that you are dealing with a single vendor for multiple security disciplines. The disadvantage of this approach is that you cannot pick specific security vendors which have more in-depth coverage in their specific discipline. For example Snyk for dependency scanning and GitGuardian for secrets scanning. So the decision is between wanting the best possible coverage and dealing with multiple vendors or, dealing with a single vendor.

As mentioned previously, GitHub Advanced Security is a platform covering different elements of application security. This page will evaluate one element of the GitHub security package, Secret Scanning, with GitGuardian’s Internal Monitoring.

Now let’s dive into how GitHub Advanced Security Secret Scanning compares with GitGuardian Internal Monitoring solution.

Let's compare!

The space is evolving quickly, and we make our best efforts to keep information on our competitors up to date. If you see any information that you consider outdated or unfair with our competitors, please contact us and we will immediately set the record straight!

General capabilities

(for both public and internal monitoring products)

Enriched interface and centralization of incidents

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Rich UI with all data needed for investigation and remediation

Yes

++ Results are displayed in the "security" section of a given repository (see here)

InfoSec team view (global view)

Yes

-- No centralized interface for Infosec team or Github admin team

Developer view (local view)

Yes

++ Developer with sufficient rights at the repo level can see the "security" section

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Detection

Harvest candidates

Filter false positives

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Regular expressions to match known, distinct patterns

Yes - Over %ndet% secrets detectors (API keys, database connection strings, certificates, usernames and passwords, ...)

++ 135 supported types of secrets

High entropy checks to match credentials without distinct patterns and enter “paranoid” mode

Yes, in combination with other techniques to get rid of false positives.

-- Not supported

Contextual analysis

Yes. The context of a presumed credential can help a lot to filter bad candidates (e.g. the import of an API wrapper is a strong indicator of a true positive).

Credential validity checks

Yes, where feasible.

Dictionary of anti-patterns

Yes - Ability to exclude folders such as test folders and filter certain credentials like those containing "EXAMPLE" or "QWERTY" in them (placeholders).

Feedback loop to constantly improve the algorithms

Yes. Approx. %secrets-scanned-in-a-day% alerts sent per day!

Sensitive File names

Sensitive filetypes raise specific alerts: policy breaks.

-- Not supported

Ability to define custom detectors

Yes, but only through our support and if the detector can be deployed for all customers. Full ability to define custom detectors to be expected in H2 2021.

++ Supported, with regular expression syntax

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Implementation method

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Instance Level

Yes

++ Yes

Org Level

Yes, native GitHub app at organisation level (simple integration)

++ Yes

Individual repository level

Yes, upon integration of a GHE organization, users can choose to:
- give access to only one repository in particular
- give access to all repositories (and the ones that will be created).

++ Yes

Secrets Detection API

Core detection engine can be used to scan any type of text files (Slack messages, Gdivre, Jira tickets, etc.) More information: here

-- No secret detection API (GitHub’s available API can be used to fetch alerts)

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Alerting

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Real-time alerting

Yes

Email alerting

Yes

++ Email alert to the repository administrators, organization owners and commit author

Splunk

Native integration

-- Not supported

Integration with most common SIEMs or ITSMs

Yes

Slack alerting

Yes

-- Not supported

JIRA

Native integration (Q4 2021)

-- Not supported

Custom webhook to integrate anywhere

Available to push alerts (JSON output format)

++ Available

GitLab Issues

Not supported

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Incident Life Cycle Management

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Collect and structure weak signals to prioritize incidents

Yes - For example, credentials containing “admin” or “prod” in their context can be prioritized.

Ability to assign incidents / mark them as resolved / etc.

Yes

Whitelisting

Yes - Whitelist credentials or folders such as test folders.

++ Yes

Grouping / deduplication of alerts

Yes - Multiple alerts related to the same leaked credential are grouped and can be resolved in a unified manner. No need to triage/resolve every single occurrence.

-- Not supported

REST API

API to retrieve and update secrets incidents

++ Yes

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Reporting

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

In app

Yes - Global Health Status, MTTD / MTTR, etc.

-- No centralized view

Data exporting

Yes - Enriched data can be exported in CSV format.

-- Real-time incidents can be programmatically retrieved using the API.

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Security

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

SSO authentication

Yes

++ Yes

RBAC

Yes - Roles available: Owner / Manager (Admin) / Members.

++ Secret scanning access rights can be granted by Admins / Repo owners to certain users/teams

Audit trail

Yes

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Get a demo

Public monitoring product

(On top of general capabilities)

Monitoring

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Monitor all GitHub public activity, at scale

Yes

Reliably filter public activity on GitHub that is linked with your company

Yes - We have the ability to match developers, source code and companies using a unique combination of heuristics. Contact us, we will show you our results for your company!

Identify and monitor developers’ personal repositories

Yes - This is where 80% of corporate leaks occur on GitHub.

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Deployment
of the solution

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Available in SaaS

Yes

Available On Prem

No - GitGuardian Public Monitoring scans only public data, thus on prem is often not a requirement for our customers.

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Get a demo

Internal monitoring product

(On top of general capabilities)

Integration with the Version Control System

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

GitHub native integration

Yes - Integration at the GitHub Org level with the ability to select monitored repositories

GitLab native integration

Yes - Integration at the instance level on full perimeter or at the group level

Bitbucket native integration

Yes - Bitbucket Server/Data Center customer only

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SDLC stage scanning capabilities

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Pre-commit

Supported through GitGuardian Shield (view documentation here)

-- Not supported

Pre-push

Supported through GitGuardian Shield (view documentation here)

-- Not supported

Pre-receive

Supported but not recommended because "pre receive" can block developers and create friction

-- Not supported

Post-receive

Yes, supported natively. Real-time incremental scanning.

++ Yes

CI pipeline

Natively integrates with GitLab pipelines, in addition to CircleCI, Travis CI, Drone CI...

++ Yes, runs with GitHub Actions

Full historical scan

Yes, can be launched on-demand through the interface

-- Not supported

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Secure the SDLC and more

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Detection API to integrate anywhere in the SLDC and the tools developers use

Yes - Integrate GitGuardian as a pre-commit or scan Slack messages for secrets using our API (that can be self-hosted)

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“Shift left”

GitGuardian

GitHub Advanced Security

Put the developer in the loop

InfoSec can collect feedback from the developers directly in the dashboard and collaborate in order to remediate.

-- Infosec team not involved and kept out of the equation.

“Auto-heal” incidents

Developers have the ability to resolve certain incidents by themselves without involving InfoSec if not needed.

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