Which strategy can be effectively used in a CI/CD pipeline for maintaining application integrity?

In the context of maintaining application integrity within a CI/CD pipeline, adding attestation requirements for container images is a highly effective strategy. This approach involves establishing a process where only container images that have been verified and signed by a trusted authority or through a specific policy can be deployed to production environments.

Attestation helps ensure that the images being used have not been tampered with and meet certain security requirements, such as compliance with organizational policies or vulnerability scanning outcomes. This process enhances the security posture of the application by enforcing a trust model around the container images being deployed, thereby protecting the production systems from introducing malicious or flawed software that could compromise integrity.

While other strategies, like automating testing processes or implementing regular backups, contribute to overall system resilience and reliability, they do not directly enforce the integrity of the application in the way that attestation for container images does. By focusing on verifying and trusting the images before they go into production, you substantially reduce the risk of deploying insecure or compromised code, which is critical for maintaining application integrity throughout the development lifecycle.