Your GitLab Data Security: 14 Critical Areas To Address

Modern organizations often use GitLab as a core version control system (VCS), making it one of the most essential systems for DevOps. Given the critical nature of the data stored here, thorough evaluation of risks and implementing data protection best practices are a must. According to the Shared Responsibility Model, GitLab provides security for the underlying infrastructure, while the user’s duty is to keep data protected.

👉 More about GitLab’s Shared Responsibility Model.

In this article, we go into detail about the possible ways to lose GitLab data, and how this can be prevented.

#1 Accidental deletion of projects 

Let’s begin by stating that human error is the most common cause of data loss in 2025. A single misclick on “Delete project” or “Delete group” can permanently erase GitLab repositories, merge requests, wikis, and all related metadata. In terms of GitLab.com, it is stated that deleted projects enter a pending deletion state – then they are automatically erased after 30 days.

💡 To delete projects you need Owner role (or admin permissions). Poor management of access control opens pathways for accidental deletion to take place.

Avoid accidental deletions in GitLab:

• Archive instead of deleting 
• Restrict permissions to delete
• Protect important branches, and configure Protected Branches so that essential code cannot be removed or overwritten 
• Automate backups with GitLab’s native capabilities or opt for third-party solutions like GitProtect.io 
• Implement flexible disaster recovery with features like point-in-time and granular restore
• Track deletions through GitLab Audit Events (GitLab Premium and Ultimate). You will need to review logs or integrate with external monitoring tools

#2 Vulnerable credentials

Compromised credentials remain a key factor behind many data breaches. Access tokens or SSH keys, when exposed, grant an attacker the same level of access as the account owner would. They can hijack repos, modify them, or even delete without any restriction.

Authentication and credentials security:

• Use short-lived tokens and rotate regularly
• GitLab built-in Secret Detection and Secret Masking 
• Require multifactor authentication (MFA)
• Limit scopes and permissions of PATs, group tokens, and project tokens
• Keep GitLab instances up to date for latest security patches
• Audit access logs and usage – GitLab has Audit Events (for Premium and Ultimate)

#3 Data overwritten during force push 

In GitLab, users can rewrite commit history using the force flag in the git push command. Use it with caution… A force push can permanently overwrite commits, delete your teammates’ work (rewrite pointers), or reset branches to their older states. The risk is especially high when it comes to force push and shared or production branches. It can take place when developers try to ‘clean up’ commit history or resolve conflicts, and then unintentionally remove data in the process.

Don’t lose data due to force push:

• Configure Protected Branches to disallow force pushes, disable branch deletion, and control who can push & merge
• All changes shall require review and go through a merge request
• Push rules guarantee extra protection such as enforcing signed commits and blocking tag deletion
• Use git reflog to recover commits
• Prevent accidental overwriting of teammates’ commits with –force-with-lease. It does not overwrite commits that you don’t already have locally and is considered the ‘safe’ alternative to force push 
• Implement off-site backups with point-in-time restore that supports recovery after a force push

#4 Beware of insider threats 

Insider threats can be accidental deletions as well as malicious sabotage, like credential sharing. GitLab actually centralizes repositories, issues, CI/CD pipelines, and secrets, therefore, a single compromised account can damage the development lifecycle, reputation, and business continuity.

Secure your organization from within:

• Leverage the principle of least privilege 
• Implement role-based access control
• With GitLab’s group and subgroup hierarchy ensure users inherit only the permissions required for their role and prevent accidental overexposure
• Review permissions on regular basis
• Enforce MFA and SSO for all users and SSO managed by the external identity providers (IdP) for all users
• Clearly separate duties between administration and development 
• Don’t overlook off-boarding processes – revoke unnecessary permissions

#5 Data corruption beyond source code 

Apart from repos GitLab includes CI/CD data, artifacts, issues, wikis, attachments, and metadata. Now, these are all stored across multiple backend services such as Gitaly (for repositories), PostgreSQL (for metadata and issues), Redis (for caching and sessions), and object storage (for artifacts and uploads). If any of these break or end up misconfigured, projects can become partially or fully unrecoverable. In self-managed instances, misconfigured storage paths, failed Gitaly nodes, or unoptimized PostgreSQL replication can cause integrity issues or data desynchronization.

To prevent data corruption: 

• Perform regular full and incremental backups
• Verify data integrity frequently
• Apply configuration management and monitoring to avoid corruptions before deployment

#6 The growth of ransomware 

The rate of ransomware grew rapidly in recent years. While self-managed GitLab instances face significantly higher ransomware and malware exposure than GitLab.com (SaaS), both require proper security measures. Self-managed GitLab instances, however, put the duty on the user to manage the OS, network, storage, and access to data; so if any layer gets compromised, attackers can encrypt and/or corrupt:

• Gitaly repositories
• PostgreSQL metadata (issues, MRs, permissions, pipeline data)
• CI/CD artifacts and logs
• uploads, LFS objects, registry images
• backup directories (if improperly stored on the same server)

Ransomware can lead to service outages, encrypted repositories, or corruption of every project under a group. This would further result in damaged reputation, costly compliance violations or complete stop of primary operations. With GitLab being a DevSecOps platform, ransomware wouldn’t just affect code, but also pipelines, secrets, deploy tokens, and business continuity too.

Ransomware protection 

As the party responsible for the protection of accounts, access, authorization and data, the user needs strict permission control, secure network and immutable, off-site backups. To prevent ransomware from doing any damage to your GitLab environment, isolate GitLab components (Gitaly, PostgreSQL, Redis, object storage) on restricted networks and avoid exposing them publicly. In this way, you can guarantee endpoint protection, restrict deploy tokens, enforce firewall rules and prevent malicious code execution. Remember to backup your data with trusted providers, implement flexible recovery and stay compliant with industry standards.

#7 No backup or disaster recovery

Backup and disaster recovery (DR) are a key aspect of any effective data protection strategy. Reliable solutions guarantee data security in the face of accidental deletions, malicious insiders, ransomware attacks, service outages and even simple migrations. Under the aforementioned Shared Responsibility Model, the user is responsible for both backup and recovery.

👉 Why third-party backup is necessary for GitLab (and other git-based platforms)

To ensure data integrity, data recovery and prevent attackers from erasing (or altering) any of your GitLab data, your backup and DR solution shall meet a number of requirements:

• Immutable, off-site, WORM-compliant storage 
• Geo-redundancy, replication
• Data residency of choice 
• Automated backup
• Scheduling with different, customizable plans
• Full coverage with all critical metadata
• Encryption at rest and in transit 
• 3-2-1 backup rule 
• Unlimited retention
• Compliance with industry regulations like SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001
• Flexible recovery with point-in-time restore and full data recovery 

#8 Single Group Owner bottleneck 

Relying on a single Project Maintainer or Group Owner leaves you with a single point of failure in GitLab. If that one person is unavailable teams may be unable to merge code, approve changes, manage runners, or update project settings.

💡 The Group Owner gets full administrative rights over a group and all its projects. Then, the Project Maintainer, is the highest project-level role (can push to protected branches and manage repo settings).

Both of these roles involve responsibility. The entire SDLC may stop instantly once the responsible individual becomes unavailable, so be sure to have:

• At least two Group Owners for important groups or subgroups
• Multiple Project Maintainers for critical repositories
• Document processes so there is no person-dependent knowledge

#9 GitLab service disruptions

Both GitLab.com (SaaS) and self-managed GitLab instances are prone to service disruptions. Such cases can leave users with no access to their critical data. Self-managed instances introduce greater complexity and risk, where downtime can lead to data loss. If your instance becomes unavailable with failed upgrades or misconfigured storage instances, metadata may end up incomplete or unrecoverable.

Avoid downtime, data loss and damaged reputation:

• Maintain local clones and/or off-site mirrors of critical repositories
• Store backups off-site 
• Test all upgrades and migrations in a staging environment
• Monitor GitLab components and implement alerts to detect issues early
• Use High Availability (HA) for production instances
• Utilize GitLab Geo replication for regional redundancy, but monitor for replication lag
• Back up before every upgrade or configuration change
• Avoid relying on CI pipelines for backups or exports (if runners or the API go down – your backups go down too)
• Leverage third-party backup and DR solutions for cross-over restore, point-in-time and granular recovery to minimize downtime
• Create a downtime communication plan, outline roles clearly

#10 Pipeline or job failure due to misconfiguration or API overload

GitLab CI/CD pipelines depend on a valid .gitlab-ci.yml, correctly configured runners (matching tags, proper executors), and sufficient API availability. Any misconfigurations in pipeline logic, or missing variables, can cause jobs to fail before any artifacts, or build outputs are saved. When these jobs cover deployables, documentation, or backups, failures may lead to data loss.

On GitLab.com, API rate limits apply to job tokens, artifact uploads, registry operations, and automation flows. Pipelines that rely on API calls may fail or stop mid-execution under heavy load, resulting in incomplete artifacts, or failed exports.

How shall this be addressed:

• Validate all pipelines before execution
• Guarantee proper runner configuration
• Critical pipelines get dedicated runners
• Monitor API rate limits, CI/CD errors & set up alerts

#11 Insecure GitLab CI/CD pipelines and runners

GitLab CI/CD has direct access to your environment (repos, variables, tokens, and deploy credentials). If pipelines or runners are left open, misconfigured, or too permissive, you hand attackers a ready-made execution path. A single job can expose CI/CD variables, leak tokens, or run code that tampers with artifacts or pushes poisoned changes upstream.

💡 In short: if your runners aren’t isolated and your pipelines aren’t locked down, your entire SDLC becomes an entry point.

Secure pipelines and runners:

• Never expose runners publicly 
• Protect secrets and variables 
• Define who can run pipelines and limit job permissions
• Verify images before they get to CI
• Review pipelines just like code
• Keep staging and production credentials separated, do not reuse tokens between environments
• Monitor runners for suspicious jobs and rotate your tokens

#12 Unsafe third-party integrations

GitLab allows users to integrate third-party tools to streamline their work and simplify collaboration. These include Jira, Slack and Kubernetes. Carefully evaluate everything that gets added into your GitLab environment, especially when it comes to production repos. 

Every integration is a new potential failure point. If an integration is misconfigured, or uses overly broad tokens, attackers don’t even have to breach GitLab directly to steal your data. The attacker will exploit weaker systems tied to your instance and pull secrets or trigger pipelines.

Ensure security for all third-party integrations:

• Use minimal token scopes
• Rotate all integration credentials regularly
• Remove unused webhooks and abandoned apps
• Validate inbound requests (signatures, HTTPS)
• Monitor integration-triggered activity
• Store secrets only as masked, scoped CI/CD variables
• Run custom security scanners

#13 Mirrors and repository divergence

Mirrors need proper management. If a mirrored repo isn’t syncing, branches drift, commits diverge, and teams end up working on outdated code. Failed pull/push mirrors, expired tokens, or silent sync errors leave repos out of date. Now, any overwrite or merge after that becomes real data loss.

Address the risks:

• Sync mirrors on a schedule, not manually
• Rotate tokens so mirrors don’t break silently
• Let CI test merges before they hit main
• Keep feature branches synced with main regularly
• Fix conflicts locally before pushing upstream
• Review permissions so only trusted roles can overwrite mirrored branches

#14 Public projects and data exposure

Public projects are the easiest way for secrets to get leaked. A single commit with an API key, access token, SSH key, or environment file is enough to expose your entire GitLab environment. GitLab’s public visibility makes it instantly accessible to scanners and bots. Even deleted commits stay in history, forks, caches, and mirrors. Once it’s pushed publicly, you’ve lost control of it.

Watch out for public projects:

• Keep sensitive projects private by default
• Use Secret Detection to catch leaked keys instantly
• Block commits containing secrets with pre-commit hooks
• Rotate any credential that ever touched a public commit
• Use protected branches so no one pushes unreviewed code
• Scan projects regularly for forgotten secrets or config files

💡 What is next for GitLab data protection:
GitLab Backup And Restore Best Practices
GitLab Restore And Disaster Recovery – How To Eliminate Data Loss
Ready to boost data protection in GitLab? Check out GitProtect’s automated backup solution for DevOps