Building Real Software Supply Chain Resilience in a Time of Rising Pressure

By Tim Miller, Co-Founder and CEO at Kusari

Organizations have spent the past decade modernizing how they build and ship software. It’s a moving target in a world that only gets faster: the attack surface has grown, the tooling ecosystem has exploded, and new regulations are starting to reshape expectations around how teams prove the integrity of what they release. Security leaders are being asked to show that they can anticipate tampering attempts, understand the trust relationships in their build systems, and keep their pipelines stable even when something breaks. Put simply, resilience has become as important as prevention.

Recent guidance and mandates are only accelerating this shift. Governments in the United States and Europe continue to push for more verifiable practices around provenance, dependency management, and vulnerability handling. Large enterprises now expect stronger controls from their vendors, and many have added software supply chain requirements into procurement. These pressures are meant to force a change in mindset, it is no longer enough to scan code and hope for the best. Teams need to understand how their software is produced, what third-party components it depends on, and how to recover from issues.

The good news is that resilience is achievable. It does not require ripping out your toolchain or drafting a 20-page policy. It starts with a clearer view of how your software gets built and shipped, and a thoughtful plan for what you will do when something unexpected shows up. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to avoid being caught off guard.

What Real Resilience Looks Like

The phrase “software supply chain” can feel abstract, but resilience is built through very practical steps. The following areas make the biggest difference for most teams.

1. Start by mapping your build and release processes.
You cannot secure what you cannot describe. Most organizations underestimate how complex their pipelines have become. Many have multiple build systems, automation servers, test runners, and deployment tools. Take time to map the full flow from source to production. Identify every step, every integration, and every place where code or artifacts are pulled from external sources. This provides a foundation for everything else you do.

2. Strengthen identity, access, and the trust boundaries around your builds.
Attackers often look for weak authentication, overly permissive service accounts, or misconfigured automation. Implement strong identity controls for both humans and machines. Limit who can trigger builds, push artifacts, or modify pipeline definitions. Use workload identity where possible so that secrets are not scattered across scripts or configuration files.

3. Make provenance part of your normal workflow.
Provenance attestations capture how software was built, which source it came from, who signed off on it, and what dependencies were used. These records become invaluable when responding to an incident or audit. Even basic provenance provides clarity during chaotic moments. Many teams discover that producing these records is easier than they expected once they attach it to their existing CI processes.

4. Monitor and inventory your dependencies with care.
Most organizations do not have a reliable picture of which open source libraries they use, what versions they rely on, and where those components are used. Modern build systems often download dependencies dynamically, which makes this problem even more opaque. Create or adopt a process that inventories dependencies, tracks changes over time, and flags known vulnerabilities. Resilience depends on having a realistic view of the terrain you are standing on.

5. Treat your build systems as critical infrastructure.
Developers spend a lot of time improving application architecture. They spend much less time hardening the systems that create those applications. Your build system should receive the same security attention as your production environment. That includes patching, monitoring, segmentation, and regular reviews of configuration drift.  Build systems are effectively code execution as a service, so treat them accordingly.

6. Build response plans that assume something will eventually fail.
A resilient supply chain is not one that never sees a problem. It is one that can recover without panic. Write down what you will do if (when) one of these things happens: a dependency is compromised, your artifact store becomes unavailable, or your CI system loses trust. Decide ahead of time how you will validate previous releases, how you will rebuild artifacts, and how you will communicate with customers. The time to plan is before you need the plan.

Navigating Threats Without Losing Momentum

Security teams are under constant pressure to address new attack techniques without slowing down engineering. This tension is not going away. What can change is how organizations approach the problem.

A healthy mindset treats software supply chain attacks as a category of operational risk, not a niche technical curiosity. Attackers are targeting build pipelines because they provide leverage. If you compromise one build system, you may reach thousands of downstream users. That reality means organizations need to focus on the basics that reduce attacker opportunity. Strong identity controls, immutable logs, dependency hygiene, and clear provenance records all reduce the room attackers have to operate.

The other shift is cultural. Resilience cannot be the responsibility of a single team. Developers, platform engineers, and security staff need a shared understanding of how software moves through the system. This reduces handoff confusion, increases trust, and makes it easier to adapt when new requirements arrive.

A Future Built on Transparency and Stability

The regulatory environment will continue to evolve. More organizations will begin to demand verifiable build processes and higher standards for dependency management. This can feel overwhelming at first, but the path forward is manageable. The fundamentals of resilience are neither exotic nor impossible. They involve understanding your systems, putting guardrails around the parts that matter most, and accepting that perfect prevention is unrealistic.

Teams that embrace this approach will not just satisfy auditors. They will build stronger pipelines, detect issues earlier, and recover faster when something goes wrong. That is the essence of supply chain resilience: being ready for what comes next.