How can you measure the impact of enabling GAS in a project?

• A. Increase in build times only.
• B. Only count the number of advisories created.
• C. No measurable impact is possible.
• D. Reduced risk, fewer secrets leaked, faster remediation, improved SBOM visibility, and faster vulnerability management.

Answer: (D)

Measuring the impact of enabling GAS focuses on the security outcomes you actually achieve, not just surface activities. When GAS is in place, you want to see tangible improvements in how risk is reduced and how efficiently you detect, expose, and fix issues. The best measure combines several concrete benefits: a lower overall risk profile, fewer secrets leaking or at risk, faster remediation once problems are found, clearer visibility into what your codebase contains through the software bill of materials (SBOM), and quicker, more effective management of vulnerabilities. This broad view connects the tools GAS provides—secret scanning, code scanning, Dependabot advisories, SBOM insights—directly to real security gains. In contrast, focusing on build times misses security effects; counting only advisories doesn’t show whether those advisories were remediated; and claiming no measurable impact ignores the concrete improvements you can observe in risk, remediation speed, and visibility. Useful metrics to track include time to remediate issues, the rate of secrets detected and mitigated, the number of vulnerabilities resolved over time, and SBOM coverage across projects—together they demonstrate the impact of enabling GAS.