SonarQube catches exposed secrets—like passwords and access tokens—the moment they are written. With actionable code intelligence, developers can remediate immediately, ensuring code security and code health are maintained at the speed of development.
Once secrets are committed to a repository, they are compromised. Remediation requires rotating credentials and cleaning history—a process that creates significant developer toil and operational friction. Preventing secrets is more effective than post-commit remediation. SonarQube for IDE intercepts these risks as you write, providing actionable intelligence needed to ensure code security and code health. This proactive approach protects your private data sources and eliminates the need for security fixes.
SonarQube uses a powerful combination of regular expressions and semantic analysis to detect secrets in source code. We scan as you code in your IDE with SonarQube for IDE in a true shift left approach, unlike other secrets detection tools, which only detect secrets in Git repositories. Because SonarQube can detect secrets in code while you write, secrets never enter your repository, eliminating leakage. This proactive coverage extends into the CI/CD pipeline with automated quality gates to prevent risky changes from merging.
Sonar leverages the power of both RegEx and Semantic Analysis
Publicly known secrets cover most of your secrets, but a good portion are company-specific secrets with a structure or format only your company knows. Create custom rules with SonarQube Server Enterprise Edition and Data Center Edition to detect your company’s private secret patterns and deliver the best secrets detection coverage, up to 100% of all your secrets.
SonarQube goes above and beyond by educating developers within‑IDE guidance and code scanning that pinpoints which code contains secrets in your CI/CD pipeline. Each secrets detection rule includes clear remediation content explaining why the found code segment is a secret and the security risk impact, supporting DevSecOps best practices and compliance. Now developers know how not to include secrets in their code with actionable, audit‑ready guidance and quality gates that prevent leaks before merge.
