Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Over the past few years, Platform Engineering has taken off as more and more as enterprise organisations adopt the practice of creating a centralised, self-service interface for developers to access the tools they need in order for them to do the job they were meant to do: build amazing software. At the heart of every Golden Path lies the ability to reliably produce, store, and consume build artifacts, from container images to internal libraries.

Improper artifact integrity validation is a critical vulnerability in CI/CD pipelines characterised by insufficient mechanisms to cryptographically verify the authenticity and integrity of code and build artifacts traversing the pipeline. When these controls are weak or absent, adversaries with access to any pipeline stage can inject malicious or tampered artifacts that appear legitimate, enabling undetected propagation through the pipeline and eventual deployment into production environments.

The Cloudsmith 2025 Artifact Management Report offers timely insights into how engineering and DevOps teams are evolving their approach to software artifact management and software supply chain security. With supply chain attacks on the rise and Generative AI reshaping development practices, teams are reevaluating how they manage, secure, and scale their artifact repository infrastructure.