2.1.3.1. Artifact Use Cases & Secure Management

First Principle: Secure artifact management is a critical control point in the software supply chain, ensuring that only trusted and validated components are used in deployments.

Artifacts are the tangible outputs of your build process, ranging from compiled code and container images to configuration files and documentation. Their secure management is paramount to maintaining the integrity and security of your software supply chain.

Common Artifact Use Cases:

• Application Bundles: .zip, .jar, .war files for deployment to EC2, Lambda, or Elastic Beanstalk.
• Container Images: Docker images stored in registries like Amazon ECR.
• Configuration Files: Environment-specific configuration packages.
• Infrastructure Templates: CloudFormation or Terraform templates.
• Libraries/Dependencies: Reusable code packages stored in artifact repositories.

Secure Management Practices:

• Access Control: Implement strict IAM policies to control who can publish, retrieve, or delete artifacts.
• Encryption: Encrypt artifacts at rest (e.g., S3 encryption, ECR encryption) and in transit.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Scan container images (e.g., ECR image scanning) and other artifacts for known vulnerabilities.
• Version Control: Ensure every artifact is versioned and linked to its source code.
• Immutability: Once created, artifacts should ideally be immutable to prevent tampering.

Scenario: A DevOps team manages container images for production applications. They need to ensure these images are stored securely, scanned for vulnerabilities before deployment, and that only authorized pipelines can access them.

Reflection Question: How does implementing robust access controls (IAM), encryption, and vulnerability scanning for container images in Amazon ECR contribute to a secure software supply chain and prevent insecure artifacts from reaching production?

💡 Tip: Integrate artifact scanning for vulnerabilities directly into your CI/CD pipeline. Fail the pipeline if critical vulnerabilities are detected to prevent insecure artifacts from reaching production.