Tutorial: Set up a scan execution policy

This tutorial shows you how to create and apply a scan execution policy. These policies enforce application security tools as part of the CI/CD pipeline. In this tutorial, you create a policy to enforce secret detection in the CI/CD pipeline of two projects.

In this tutorial, you:

Prerequisite:

  • Permission to create new projects in an existing group.

Create project A

In a standard workflow, you might already have an existing project. In this tutorial, you’re starting with nothing, so the first step is to create a project.

To create project A:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select New project.
  3. Select Create blank project.
  4. Complete the fields. For Project name, enter go-example-a.
  5. Select Create project.
  6. Select Add (+) > New file.
  7. Enter helloworld.go in the filename.

  8. Copy and paste the following example Go code into the file.

    package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello world")
}
  9. Select Commit changes.

The next step is to create a scan execution policy. When the first security policy is created, a policy project is created. The policy project stores the security policies created in any projects that are linked to it. Keeping policies separate from the projects they protect makes your security configuration reusable and easier to maintain.

Create the scan execution policy

To create the scan execution policy:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and search for the go-example-a project.
  2. Go to Secure > Policies.
  3. Select New policy.
  4. In the Scan execution policy section, select Select policy.
  5. Complete the fields.
    • Name: Enforce secret detection.
    • Policy status: Enabled.
    • Actions: Run a Secret Detection scan.
    • Conditions: Triggers every time a pipeline runs for all branches.

  6. Select Configure with a merge request.

    The policy project go-example-a - Security project is created, and a merge request is created.

  7. Optional. Review the generated policy YAML in the merge request’s Changes tab.
  8. Go to the Overview tab and select Merge.
  9. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and search for the go-example-a project.
  10. Go to Secure > Policies.

You now have a scan execution policy that runs a secret detection scan on every MR, for any branch. Test the policy by creating a merge request in project A.

Test the scan execution policy with project A

To test the scan execution policy:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find the project named go-example-a.
  2. Go to Code > Repository.
  3. Select the helloworld.go file.
  4. Select Edit > Edit single file.

  5. Add the following line immediately after the fmt.Println("hello world") line:

    var GitLabFeedToken = "feed_token=eFLISqaBym4EjAefkl58"
  6. In the Target Branch field, enter feature-a.
  7. Select Commit changes.

  8. When the merge request page opens, select Create merge request.

    Let’s check if the scan execution policy worked. Remember that we specified that secret detection is to run every time a pipeline runs, for any branch.

  9. In the merge request just created, go the Pipelines tab and select the created pipeline.

    Here you can see that a secret detection job ran. Let’s check if it detected the test secret.

  10. Select the secret detection job.

    Near the bottom of the job’s log, the following output confirms that the example secret was detected.

    [INFO] [secrets] [2023-09-04T03:46:36Z] ▶ 3:46AM INF 1 commits scanned.
[INFO] [secrets] [2023-09-04T03:46:36Z] ▶ 3:46AM INF scan completed in 60ms
[INFO] [secrets] [2023-09-04T03:46:36Z] ▶ 3:46AM WRN leaks found: 1

You’ve seen the policy work for one project. Create another project and apply the same policy.

Create project B

To create project B:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select New project.
  3. Select Create blank project.
  4. Complete the fields. For Project name, enter go-example-b.
  5. Select Create project.
  6. Select Add (+) > New file.
  7. Enter helloworld.go in the filename.

  8. Copy and paste the following example Go code into the file.

    package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello world")
}
  9. Select Commit changes.

Now that you have another project, you link it to the same policy project.

To link project B to the security policy project:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find the go-example-b project.
  2. Go to Secure > Policies.
  3. Select Edit policy project.
  4. Select the dropdown list, then search for the security policy project created at the start of this tutorial.
  5. Select Save.

Linking project B to the same policy project resulted in the same policy being applied. A scan execution policy runs a secret detection scan on every MR, for any branch. Let’s test the policy by creating an MR in project B.

Test the scan execution policy with project B

To test the scan execution policy:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find the go-example-b project.
  2. Go to Code > Repository.
  3. Select the helloworld.go file.
  4. Select Edit > Edit single file.

  5. Add the following line immediately after the fmt.Println("hello world") line:

    var AdobeClient = "4ab4b080d9ce4072a6be2629c399d653"
  6. In the Target Branch field, enter feature-b.
  7. Select Commit changes.

  8. When the merge request page opens, select Create merge request.

    Let’s check if the scan execution policy worked. Remember that we specified that secret detection is to run every time a pipeline runs, for any branch.

  9. In the merge request just created, go the Pipelines tab and select the created pipeline.

  10. In the merge request just created, select the pipeline’s ID.

    Here you can see that a secret detection job ran. Let’s check if it detected the test secret.

  11. Select the secret detection job.

    Near the bottom of the job’s log, the following output confirms that the example secret was detected.

    [INFO] [secrets] [2023-09-04T04:22:28Z] ▶ 4:22AM INF 1 commits scanned.
[INFO] [secrets] [2023-09-04T04:22:28Z] ▶ 4:22AM INF scan completed in 58.2ms
[INFO] [secrets] [2023-09-04T04:22:28Z] ▶ 4:22AM WRN leaks found: 1

Congratulations. You’ve learned how to create a scan execution policy and enforce it on projects.