Why Chainguard’s Full-Stack Approach to Secure Software Supply Chain Is Built to Scale

In an increasingly crowded landscape of supply chain security tools, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of partial solutions. At Chainguard, we’ve taken a fundamentally different approach — one that goes beyond offering components or toolkits and instead provides a fully integrated, end-to-end solution. Central to that approach is the combination of Chainguard OS and the Chainguard Factory. These two pillars work hand-in-hand to deliver what we believe is the only scalable path to secure, reliable software artifacts.

Beyond the OS: Why a Secure Image Is More Than a Secure Base Layer

At the foundation of our stack is Chainguard OS, a new kind of Linux operating system built with security and reproducibility at its core. Unlike traditional OS distributions, we continuously rebuild every maintained version of every component from source via “nano updates” rather than relying on big bang upgrades that often lead to engineering and operational headaches. This approach allows us to precisely manage and trace what goes into each image, and to deliver those images on a daily basis. But Chainguard OS is just the beginning — it’s the base layer in a much more comprehensive stack.

Each Chainguard container image layers on the tools, dependencies, and third-party applications developers need, all wrapped with cryptographically verifiable metadata. This enables not only secure deployment but also trustworthy provenance and a robust compliance posture. The result is secure, purpose-built, immutable images that just work — without the burden of assembling and securing all the moving parts yourself.

The Secret to Scale: The Chainguard Factory

While it’s possible for a skilled engineer to manually build a secure image stack once, doing it at scale is a different challenge entirely. That’s where the Chainguard Factory comes in.

The Factory is our automated, high-fidelity system for continuously building, maintaining, and updating thousands of trusted open source artifacts every single day. It’s the engine that powers our extensive image catalog and ensures that the latest security updates, feature updates, CVE patches, and dependency changes are handled automatically and correctly. The Chainguard Factory makes us possibly the fastest in the world at bringing a patch from source code to full stack artifact.

Like a real factory, the Chainguard Factory blends the work of skilled technicians solving hard problems with (virtual) machinery to hone the assembly line and troubleshooting processes. Each day, our team tackles the kind of complex problems that arise in real-world software ecosystems — dependency hell, version conflicts, failing builds, zero-day CVEs. Our Factory doesn’t just automate the mundane; it codifies solutions to the kinds of engineering puzzles that keep security teams up at night. That’s why we can offer not only a trusted container image today, but the assurance that it will stay secure tomorrow, and the day after that.

We Don’t Sell You a Toolbox — We Deliver a Solution

There’s a reason we don’t sell Chainguard OS as a standalone product. Doing so would be like handing you a toolbox and saying “good luck.” We don’t simply give you the raw parts — we deliver a complete, secure, and maintainable open source stack that integrates cleanly into your environment.

With Chainguard, you get more than secure building blocks — you get the outcomes you need: reduced vulnerability exposure, simplified compliance, and stronger software supply chain guarantees.

Built for Security. Built for Scale.

Today’s software supply chain challenges can’t be solved with isolated tooling. To build secure, scalable systems that can drive developer velocity and adapt to change, organizations need to have trust in their software foundations. Chainguard has grown into a leader in trusted open source artifact delivery because of our commitment to building transparent, secure by default, and comprehensive solutions.