Artifact Management: Repository Selection, Container Lifecycle, Retention, and Promotion Workflows

February 22, 2026

Cicd

Artifact-Management, Container-Lifecycle, Registry-Selection, Supply-Chain-Security

Artifacts, Container-Registry, Artifactory, Nexus, Github-Packages, Ecr, Gcr, Acr, Retention-Policy, Vulnerability-Scanning, Promotion

Artifactory, Nexus, Docker, Cosign, Trivy, Crane, Skopeo

Artifact Management#

Every CI/CD pipeline produces artifacts: container images, compiled binaries, library packages, Helm charts. Where these artifacts live, how long they are retained, how they are promoted between environments, and how they are scanned for vulnerabilities are decisions that affect security, cost, and operational reliability. Choosing the wrong artifact repository or neglecting lifecycle management creates accumulating storage costs and security blind spots.

Repository Options#

JFrog Artifactory#

Artifactory is the most comprehensive option. It supports every package type: Docker images, Maven/Gradle JARs, npm packages, PyPI wheels, Helm charts, Go modules, NuGet packages, and generic binaries. It serves as a universal artifact store and a caching proxy for upstream registries.

Infrastructure Security Testing Approaches

February 22, 2026

Security

Intermediate

Automated-Vulnerability-Scanning, Kubernetes-Security-Testing, Network-Reconnaissance, Credential-Testing, Security-Assessment-Planning

Penetration-Testing, Vulnerability-Scanning, Nessus, Openvas, Kube-Bench, Kube-Hunter, Nmap, Security-Testing, Compliance

Nessus, Openvas, Kube-Bench, Kube-Hunter, Nmap, Nikto, Kubescape, Trivy, Nuclei

Choosing the Right Testing Approach#

Infrastructure security testing is not one activity. It is a spectrum from fully automated scanning to manual adversarial testing. Each approach has different costs, coverage, and compliance implications. Choosing wrong wastes budget on low-value scans or leaves critical gaps unexamined.

The core decision is: what are you trying to learn, and what constraints do you operate under?

Decision Matrix#

Question	Automated Scanning	Kubernetes-Specific Testing	Network Scanning	Manual Penetration Testing
What does it find?	Known CVEs, misconfigurations, missing patches	K8s-specific misconfigurations, RBAC issues, pod security gaps	Open ports, exposed services, protocol weaknesses	Business logic flaws, chained exploits, privilege escalation paths
How often?	Continuous or daily	Every cluster change, weekly minimum	Weekly to monthly	Annually or after major architecture changes
Who runs it?	Automated pipeline or security team	Platform/SRE team	Security team or automated	Specialized pentest firm or red team
Cost	Low (tooling cost only)	Low (open-source tools)	Low to medium	High ($20k-$100k+ per engagement)
False positive rate	Medium to high	Low	Medium	Very low
Compliance fit	PCI-DSS 11.2, SOC2 CC7.1	CIS Kubernetes Benchmark	PCI-DSS 11.2, NIST 800-53	PCI-DSS 11.3, SOC2 CC4.1

When to Use Each Approach#

Use automated scanning when you need continuous visibility into known vulnerabilities across your infrastructure. This is the baseline. Every organization should run automated scans regardless of what other testing they do.