Provenance Attestation: Verifying Software Authenticity at Scale

Introduction

Modern enterprise development pipelines rely on a complex web of open source libraries, third-party components, CI/CD automation, and cloud-native deployment strategies. As these pipelines grow more distributed, the challenge of ensuring software authenticity and integrity becomes even more acute, elevating the importance of provenance attestation for security teams, DevOps engineers, and compliance stakeholders. Provenance attestation provides a structured, auditable approach for verifying the origin, build processes, and modification history of software artifacts, enabling organizations to mitigate supply chain risks proactively.

In this post, we’ll dive into what provenance attestation is, how it underpins software supply chain security, and practical steps for implementing reliable attestation at enterprise scale, with a focus on standards such as SLSA, SSDF, and NIST, and actionable guidance for DevOps and security professionals.

Understanding Software Provenance

Software provenance, in security contexts, refers to the documented history of a software artifact—including information on source code origins, build environments, dependencies, and modification events. Provenance attestation formalizes this documentation, usually in a cryptographically verifiable fashion, allowing downstream consumers, auditors, and automated tooling to check the authenticity and trustworthiness of artifacts before deployment.

Key Questions Provenance Attestation Answers:

Where did this software come from?
Who or what built it, and when?
Which dependencies are included, and which build steps were used?
Has the artifact been altered since it was built?

Why Is Provenance Attestation Critical?

Recent supply chain attacks such as SolarWinds and Codecov highlighted the devastating impact of unverified or compromised artifacts. Gartner estimates that 75% of organizations will experience a software supply chain incident by 2026. In response, regulators and industry groups—including NIST, the CNCF, and Google (with their SLSA framework)—have published recommendations and standards mandating provenance tracking as a core requirement for secure software development.

Key Benefits of Comprehensive Provenance Attestation:

Early detection of tampered or unauthorized artifacts
Simplified compliance reporting (e.g., for SSDF and NIST 800-204E)
Enhanced auditability for CI/CD pipelines
Isolation and mitigation of supply chain attack vectors
Automatic policy enforcement for artifact promotion and deployment

Provenance Attestation in Practice: The SLSA Framework

The Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA, pronounced “salsa”) standardizes provenance attestation requirements and provides prescriptive guidance for increasing the security posture of build pipelines. SLSA Levels 1–4 progressively introduce controls for source tracking, build reproducibility, and cryptographic signing.

Example: SLSA Level 3 Provenance Attestation

{
  "builder": {
    "id": "https://github.com/myorg/repo/.github/workflows/build.yml"
  },
  "buildType": "docker",
  "invocation": {
    "parameters": {
      "commit": "f39a2c1d009e4"
    }
  },
  "metadata": {
    "buildStartedOn": "2025-12-10T14:26:00Z",
    "buildFinishedOn": "2025-12-10T14:28:45Z"
  },
  "materials": [
    {
      "uri": "git+https://github.com/myorg/repo@f39a2c1d009e4",
      "digest": { "sha256": "..." }
    }
  ]
}

Such attestation documents are signed using cryptographic keys tied to approved build environments, and can be stored alongside artifacts in registries or artifact repositories for downstream verification.

Implementing Provenance Attestation at Scale

Enterprises moving toward scalable provenance attestation should consider the following technical and organizational strategies:

Integrate Attestation Generation in CI/CD Pipelines
Modern CI/CD platforms like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins increasingly support plugins for generating SLSA-compatible attestation. For example, Sigstore’s cosign tool allows automated signing and verification of build provenance.

Example: Using Cosign to Attach Provenance

cosign attest --predicate provenance.json --type slsa --key cosign.key myorg/myapp:1.2.3

Use Centralized Provenance Storage and Retrieval
Artifact registries such as Artifactory, AWS ECR, or Google Artifact Registry can be enhanced to store provenance metadata attached to images or binaries. Ensure retrieval logic in downstream deployments checks for valid attestation before promotion.
Automate Policy Enforcement
Tools such as Kyverno and Open Policy Agent (OPA) can enforce policies requiring verified provenance on Kubernetes clusters or at admission controller points.

Sample Kyverno Policy (Require Provenance before Image Deployment)

apiVersion: kyverno.io/v1
kind: ClusterPolicy
metadata:
  name: require-image-provenance
spec:
  rules:
    - name: check-image-provenance
      match:
        resources:
          kinds:
            - Pod
      validate:
        message: "Container image must have valid provenance attestation"
        pattern:
          spec:
            containers:
              - image: "?*"
                provenance: "?*"

4. Link Provenance to SBOMs for Enhanced Compliance

Combine provenance attestation with SBOMs (Software Bill of Materials) to map not just the current state of dependencies, but also their build origins and event history. Refer to official SPDX and CycloneDX documentation for integration guidelines.

5. Invest in Builder Hardening and Access Controls

Ensure that only trusted build environments can generate signed attestation, and rotate signing keys according to best practices referenced by NIST and CIS.

Addressing Common Challenges

Scale often uncovers difficulties in provenance attestation, such as:

Performance impact on build pipelines
Legacy systems lacking attestation capability
Incomplete upstream provenance (for open source dependencies)

Mitigation approaches include phased legacy system migration, caching strategies for attestation validation, and upstream attestation requirements in supplier contracts.

Case Study: Enterprise Kubernetes Deployment

A global financial firm with 800+ microservices implemented provenance attestation using Kubernetes admission controllers and cosign signing in CI/CD. Over six months, they reduced unauthorized deployments by 94% and sped up compliance audits, meeting ISO/IEC 27001:2022 requirements. Their key learnings emphasized developer enablement, cross-team collaboration, and early inclusion of provenance attestation in design processes.

Conclusion

As software supply chain risks climb, provenance attestation is moving from “nice-to-have” to “must-have” for secure, compliant enterprise development. By embedding attestation generation, verification, and enforcement into automated pipelines and governance frameworks, organizations can verify artifact authenticity at scale, respond rapidly to incidents, and meet regulatory mandates with confidence.

Additional Resources

Ready to elevate your software supply chain security posture? Contact Quaerens Software for a tailored assessment of your CI/CD provenance strategy and learn how our Perspicax and Probatus solutions can help implement enterprise-grade provenance attestation.

Provenance Attestation: Verifying Software Authenticity at Scale