What are GitLab's built-in security scanning templates and how do you enable them?

GitLab provides built-in CI/CD templates for security scanning that can be included in any pipeline with a single line. These templates add jobs to your pipeline that scan for vulnerabilities without requiring manual configuration.

# Include GitLab security templates:
include:
  - template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml           # Static Application Security Testing
  - template: Security/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml  # Detect secrets/tokens in code
  - template: Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
  - template: Security/DAST.gitlab-ci.yml            # Dynamic (requires running app)
  - template: Security/Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

stages:
  - build
  - test
  - security                  # security templates add jobs to appropriate stages
  - deploy

# These templates are maintained by GitLab and auto-update
# Results appear in:
# Secure > Vulnerability Report (GitLab Ultimate)
# As MR security widgets (GitLab Ultimate)

# SAST customisation:
variables:
  SAST_EXCLUDED_PATHS: "spec,test,tests,tmp"  # skip test directories
  SAST_EXCLUDED_ANALYZERS: "bandit"           # skip specific analyzer

# Secret Detection customisation:
  SECRET_DETECTION_EXCLUDED_PATHS: "tests/"

Security scanning results are visible in merge requests and the Vulnerability Report for GitLab Ultimate. For lower tiers, results appear in the job artifacts as JSON reports that can be parsed by other tools.

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