Three Ways to Make Your SDLC Secure-by-Default

Software today is built from countless open source components, automated pipelines, and cloud-native environments, all of which create massive opportunity but also increase risk exposure. As supply chain attacks become one of the leading causes of breaches, organizations are realizing that securing software after it’s built is no longer enough.

Security must “start left,” deeply embedded in every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to enable a world where the most secure way to build software is also the easiest and fastest way.

Why secure-by-default matters

Breaches initiated through the software supply chain cost businesses an average of $4.91 million per incident, according to IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report. Yet many organizations still rely on post-production patching and vulnerability scanning to catch risks after they’ve already entered the system.

As open source software (OSS) has become the foundation of modern development, attackers are increasingly exploiting the trust model that underpins it. The result is an inflection point for enterprises rethinking how to innovate securely and at scale.

When security is integrated at every layer, from developer tools to CI/CD workflows to runtime artifacts, it transforms from a blocker into a business accelerator. Teams deliver faster, auditors gain instant visibility, and customers gain confidence knowing your software is verifiably safe.

As a leader in open source supply chains, Chainguard helps organizations make this transition by securing the software supply chain from the ground up. The outcome is faster innovation and reduced risk, all without adding friction to development. Below are some foundational ways engineering and security teams can move to a secure-by-default SDLC.

1. Standardize and secure your foundations

Every secure SDLC begins with a trusted foundation. That means eliminating unverified or vulnerable dependencies entering your builds from public sources, and standardizing how software artifacts are created and maintained.

With traditional pipelines, teams often start from outdated or inconsistent base images, each containing hundreds of potential CVEs and insecure default configurations. These images are shared across services and environments, making it nearly impossible to maintain uniform security or compliance.

Chainguard addresses this by providing trusted, reproducible base images rebuilt daily in a SLSA Level 3 environment. These images are zero-CVE, malware-resistant, and cryptographically signed, ensuring every artifact in your environment comes from a verifiable, tamper-proof source. 

Beyond establishing standardized zero-CVE foundations, Chainguard container images are designed to run as a non-root user by default. This approach significantly reduces the potential attack surface of containerized applications and strengthens a secure-by-default posture.

These images can also be customized and maintained by Chainguard via Custom Assembly, so organizations don’t have to adopt “one size fits all” base images. This “purpose-built golden image” approach creates paved paths for developers: standard, secure starting points that remove ambiguity and risk while simplifying maintenance. Platform teams can roll out new versions confidently knowing that every downstream build inherits the same baseline of trust.

GitGuardian standardized on Chainguard Containers, going from facing numerous critical and high vulnerabilities to a state where such vulnerabilities were literally nonexistent. In addition, the image size was reduced by 33%. The solution not only simplified GitGuardian’s vulnerability management but also expedited the delivery of more secure software versions.

2. Automate security and compliance evidence

Security automation is the key to scale. Manual checks, ticket-based remediation, and reactive patching simply can’t keep up with modern development velocity. The most secure organizations automate provenance, validation, and compliance at the artifact level.

Chainguard helps teams achieve this through automated Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation, provenance tracking, and cryptographic signing for every build. These capabilities ensure full transparency into what’s running in production and where it came from, which is critical for compliance with regulatory standards like FedRAMP and SOC2 while also helping to meet internal or customer requirements.

This automation also transforms audits from multi-week efforts into quick, verifiable checks. Compliance evidence is generated as a byproduct of normal workflows with no extra effort or last-minute scrambles.

And because Chainguard integrates seamlessly into existing CI/CD systems and artifact repositories, these security enhancements fit naturally into how teams already build and ship code. The result is a secure-by-default workflow where governance happens automatically and invisibly.

Snowflake uses Chainguard to ensure its container builds and dependencies are continuously verified and reproducible, supporting a proactive approach to compliance that matches its enterprise-grade security posture. By integrating Chainguard Containers into the team’s software development processes, Snowflake was able to focus on solving security challenges at scale, all while reinforcing its promise of providing a secure, trustworthy data cloud platform to its customers.

3. Build developer trust through frictionless security

A secure SDLC only works if developers actually use it. Too often, security is bolted on at the end, creating delays, false positives, and frustration. The key to success is removing friction and evangelizing processes that will ultimately save devs time by embedding seemingly invisible security into developer workflows.

In a secure-by-default model, developers don’t need deep security expertise to make the right choices. Tools and policies handle it for them automatically. Permissions are short-lived, non-root users are the default, and pipelines are configured to prevent untrusted access by design.

Chainguard helps organizations strike this balance by making it easy to account for policy controls as a part of the build process, ensuring compliance without requiring additional steps from developers. The result is a culture of trust and empowerment: developers move faster because they know their builds are secure without their own manual intervention.

For Platform and DevOps teams, this also means fewer build failures, less tool sprawl, and more predictable performance. For AppSec and compliance leaders, it delivers the assurance that every deployment meets policy without the need for rigorous manual reviews.

Chainguard customer Onebrief started with one-off container image implementations to drive developer trust before switching to the Chainguard Container Catalog, giving the team every secure, pre-patched image they needed without delay. Chainguard’s FIPS-compliant images and Helm charts became the default approach to building with and deploying open source, improving Onebrief’s security posture and changing how the team thinks about product evolution.

Making secure-by-default the new normal

The organizations that succeed in the next era of software development will be those that make secure practices effortless and universal. A secure-by-default SDLC is not just a defensive strategy: it’s an innovation strategy.

By embedding trusted foundations, automating compliance, and empowering developers, companies can move from reactive security to proactive resilience. The result is software that’s safer, faster, and trusted by customers from the first commit to the final deployment.

With Chainguard, the path of least resistance is also the path to the most secure software.

Ready to see how Chainguard can help you deliver secure-by-default software that customers trust? Get in touch with our team to learn more.