🔐 Data Security

What guarantees are provided regarding code submitted to Copilot prompts?

GitHub processes prompts (the code you are currently editing and surrounding context) and suggestions via secure, encrypted connections using TLS 1.2 or higher. For Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise tiers, GitHub acts as a data processor, ensuring that your proprietary data remains isolated during transit and execution.

Is user code stored, logged, or used for further model training?

• Copilot Business & Enterprise: GitHub never retains, logs, or stores your prompts or generated suggestions once they have been processed to return a response. Your proprietary code is strictly blocked from being used to train or improve future public AI models.
• Copilot Individual Tiers: By default, Individual accounts may retain prompts and telemetry data to improve the underlying AI models. However, users can manually opt out of this behavior within their GitHub Account Settings.

Are there controls available to restrict or manage how data is processed?

Yes, administrators of organization and enterprise accounts have access to explicit policy toggles:

• Duplication Detection Filter: A core control that blocks Copilot suggestions that match 150 characters or more of existing public code on GitHub.
• Repository Exclusion: Admins can configure paths and repositories that Copilot is completely restricted from accessing or reading as context, ensuring sensitive internal files are never analyzed.

How does Copilot align with enterprise security standards?

GitHub maintains a comprehensive compliance framework. Copilot is included in GitHub’s independent third-party audits, aligning with:

• SOC 1, SOC 2 Type II, and SOC 3
• ISO/IEC 27001:2013, ISO/IEC 27701:2019
• ISO/IEC 42001 (Specifically governing artificial intelligence management systems)
• FedRAMP High (Tailored environments for US public sector compliance)

🔒 Privacy

What data is collected and how is it handled?

GitHub distinguishes between two primary data pipelines:

1. User Engagement Data (Telemetry): Includes usage metrics, IDE interactions (e.g., whether a suggestion was accepted or dismissed), and general performance data. This is retained to manage service delivery and optimize the extension's performance.
2. Prompts and Suggestions: The code snippets sent to generate completions. As noted above, this data is instantly discarded after processing for commercial enterprise accounts.

Summary of Guarantees by Subscription Plan

⚖️ Legal Protection & Liability

Generated code resembling copyrighted content & license violations

The risk of Copilot spitting out a direct copy of protected code is minimized by its underlying generation design, which synthesizes text probabilistically. To mitigate the small remaining tail risk, organizations can enforce the Duplication Detection Filter, which cross-references suggestions against GitHub's vast catalog of public open-source code and silences matching strings.

Intellectual Property Indemnification

GitHub and Microsoft provide an explicit IP Indemnification Commitment (often referred to as the Copilot Copyright Commitment) specifically for Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise customers.

• If a third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement resulting from code generated by Copilot, GitHub/Microsoft will defend the customer and pay the amount of any resulting adverse judgment or settlement.
• Prerequisite: The customer must have the tool's built-in duplication filters and guardrails turned On at the time the code was generated.

Compliance Approach for Organizations

When adopting Copilot, security and legal teams should implement a tiered framework:

1. Mandate Centralized Tiers: Standardize on Business or Enterprise accounts to enforce automatic privacy policies.
2. Enforce Guardrails Globally: Use administrative controls to force the duplication filter to "Block" across all developer machines.
3. Integrate Code Scanning: Treat AI-generated code exactly like human-written code. Run it through your existing static application security testing (SAST) tools and software composition analysis (SCA) pipelines before pushing to production.

📄 Official Pointers & Documentation

For authoritative reading and compliance verification, reference these official resources:

• GitHub Copilot Trust Center: The centralized hub mapping out transparency, compliance audits, and security operations (copilot.github.trust.page).
• GitHub Product Terms: Contains the legal language regarding product features, limitations, and the exact terms of the Copilot Copyright Commitment.
• GitHub Privacy Statement: Details exactly how telemetry and metadata are managed under data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA.