GitHub Actions update tightens security

GitHub Actions, an automated CI/CD platform for GitHub, has been enhanced for enterprise customers, with capabilities including stronger security and GPU-enhanced runners for machine learning.

GitHub announced updates to its hosted runner fleet for Actions on April 2.  To strengthen security, GitHub Actions now offers Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted runners. The feature combines compute-in-the-cloud with secure access and control over network security, eliminating the overhead of maintaining infrastructure. Hosted runners for every major operating system are intended to make it easy to build and test a project, which can be run directly on a virtual machine or a container.

With GPU-hosted runners for machine learning, now in public beta, teams working with large language models or requiring GPU graphic cards for game development now can run automation and CI/CD processes on GitHub Actions. This capability also supports application testing, auto-scaling, and private networking.

GitHub also is expanding its hosted runner fleet to include two vCPU Linux and four vCPU Windows runners. Projects can run on a VM or inside a container. Apple silicon-hosted (M1) runners also are now generally available.

The updates come as the GitHub Actions platform reaches its five-year anniversary, with 22,000 Actions now available in the GitHub Marketplace. Hosted runners maximize developer coding time by eliminating the overhead associated with infrastructure management, GitHub said. For devops administrators, hosted runners reduce the time and cost required to maintain compute infrastructure for software lifecycle automation.