Stop Secrets at the Source: Securing Code Before It Reaches Your Repo

In today’s fast-paced development environments, the need for velocity often outruns caution, leaving exposed secrets out in deployed code.

With AI-assisted coding and globally distributed teams pushing changes rapidly, the risk of inadvertently committing sensitive information — like API keys, tokens, and credentials — is higher than ever: 83% of organizations report at least one security incident caused by hardcoded secrets in the past year according to a report by Thales Group, and according to IBM, in 2024 “stolen or compromised credentials was the most common initial attack vector”, costing organizations an average of $4.5 million per incident.

One of the most effective ways to prevent secrets from reaching deployed code, is by shifting security left — embedding controls as early in the development lifecycle as possible.

As part of that, Pre-commit security checks are a critical first line of defense, designed to catch exposed secrets and risky patterns before they make it into source control.

But early scanning alone isn’t sufficient. Secure build CI/CD pipelines play an equally important role by verifying third-party dependencies, automating security checks, and enforcing policies across teams.

These practices become especially critical in AI-driven workflows, where open-source components are widely used for preprocessing, training, and inference.

Without visibility and control, these dependencies can introduce hard-to-detect vulnerabilities into the software supply chain, often through the kind of pull request or git commit that happens without a second thought.

Together, pre-commit enforcement and secure CI/CD practices form a strong foundation for proactive security — particularly in organizations where development velocity can easily outpace traditional AppSec practices.

A Developer-Centric Approach to Secrets Detection

In the modern hectic workflow, security needs to meet developers where they live. In the context of Pre-commit secrets detection, this can be done by integrating secret scanning directly into the developer workflow using Git hooks.

This method prevents commits that contain exposed secrets and provides immediate feedback, giving developers both context and clear remediation steps — Checkmarx excels at delivering this capability directly within the developer environment (IDE).

For added convenience and flexibility, secret scanning can be installed either:

Locally: Using tools like the pre-commit framework, this setup applies checks to individual repositories, which is ideal for team or project-level enforcement — See below snippet.

Globally: This configuration applies the scan across all Git repositories on a machine and is useful for organization-wide policy enforcement without needing to modify each project separately.

The below YAML snippet shows how within the Checkmarx One App Security platform, developers can configure the pre-commit secrets detection capability and protect their code prior to committing it to the shared repos.

repos: 
  - repo: local 
    hooks: 
      - id: cx-secret-detection 
        name: Cx Secret Detection 
        entry: cx 
        description: Run Cx CLI secret detection 
        stages: 
          - pre-commit 
        args: 
          - hooks 
          - pre-commit 
          - secrets-scan 
        language: system 
        pass_filenames: false 
        minimum_pre_commit_version: 3.2.0

In either mode, scans provide developers with detailed results, including file paths, secret types, and risk scores — empowering them to take quick, informed action.

When a Secret Is Detected

Upon detection, developers are presented with several options:

• Remediate (Recommended): Remove the secret and replace it with a secure alternative such as environment variables or a secret management tool.
• Ignore with Hash Tracking: Mark the result as known, storing only a hashed reference of the secret.
• Bypass (Use with Caution): Temporarily disable the hook in edge cases such as testing or emergency situations.

Sample Output of a Pre-Commit Secret Detection result (source: Checkmarx One)

Each of these paths provides clarity while preserving security hygiene and reducing the risk of accidental exposure resulting in a data breach.

Why Does Pre-Commit Secrets Detection Matters?

In a world where generative AI and high-speed delivery are the norm, security must become more integrated and automated. Pre-commit secret detection offers:

• Early prevention of potential data leaks & developer security education/best practices adoption.
• Faster feedback and reduced remediation cycles
• A practical step toward building a security-aware engineering culture

Final Thoughts

The tools and methods we use to build software have changed, but the need for foundational security controls remains constant. Implementing pre-commit secret scanning is a straightforward, developer-friendly way to stop vulnerabilities before they ever reach production — and a critical step toward more secure, scalable development practices.