CI/CD Policy Engines Compared: OPA vs Kyverno vs Sentinel vs Cedar

CI/CD Policy Engines Compared: OPA vs Kyverno vs Sentinel vs Cedar

Introduction: Why Policy Engines Matter for CI/CD Modern CI/CD pipelines move fast. Teams push dozens — sometimes hundreds — of deployments per day, and every one of those deployments carries configuration decisions that affect security, compliance, and operational stability. A single misconfigured Kubernetes manifest, an overly permissive IAM role in Terraform, or a container image … Read more

SBOM Tools Compared: Syft vs Trivy vs CycloneDX CLI

SBOM Tools Compared: Syft vs Trivy vs CycloneDX CLI

Why SBOMs Matter: The Regulatory and Security Imperative A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a formal, machine-readable inventory of every component, library, and dependency that makes up a piece of software. Think of it as the nutritional label for your application — except instead of calories and sodium, you’re listing packages, versions, licenses, and … Read more

Lab: Enforcing Kubernetes Deployment Policies with OPA Conftest in CI/CD

Lab: Enforcing Kubernetes Deployment Policies with OPA Conftest in CI/CD

Overview Misconfigured Kubernetes manifests are one of the top causes of production security incidents. A container running as root, an unpinned image tag, a missing resource limit, or an exposed host network can each open the door to privilege escalation, resource exhaustion, or lateral movement inside your cluster. The problem is that these misconfigurations are … Read more

Lab: Detecting and Preventing Secret Leaks in CI/CD Pipelines

Lab: Detecting and Preventing Secret Leaks in CI/CD Pipelines

Overview Secret leaks in CI/CD pipelines are the number one cause of pipeline compromise. Exposed credentials — API keys, database passwords, cloud access tokens — give attackers a direct path into production systems. According to GitGuardian’s 2025 State of Secrets Sprawl report, over 12 million new secrets were detected in public GitHub commits in a … Read more

Lab: Hardening GitHub Actions Workflows — Permissions, Pinning, and Secrets

Lab: Hardening GitHub Actions Workflows — Permissions, Pinning, and Secrets

Overview GitHub Actions has become the most widely adopted CI/CD platform for open-source and commercial software alike. That popularity makes it the number-one attack surface in the CI/CD landscape. Misconfigured workflows routinely leak secrets, grant excessive permissions, and pull in third-party code that can be silently tampered with. In this hands-on lab you will harden … Read more

Lab: Generating and Verifying SLSA Provenance for Container Images

Lab: Generating and Verifying SLSA Provenance for Container Images

Overview SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts) provenance is a verifiable record that describes how an artifact was built: the source repository, the build platform, the entry point, and the input materials. When attached to a container image, provenance lets consumers answer a critical question before deploying: “Was this image actually built from the source … Read more

Lab: Signing and Verifying Container Images with Cosign in GitHub Actions

Lab: Signing and Verifying Container Images with Cosign in GitHub Actions

Overview Every container image your CI/CD pipeline produces should be cryptographically signed before it reaches any environment. Unsigned images are a blind spot — you have no proof they came from your pipeline, no guarantee they weren’t tampered with in transit, and no policy hook to block rogue deployments. In this hands-on lab you will: … Read more

Lab: Securing GitLab CI Pipelines — Protected Variables, Runners, and Environments

Lab: Securing GitLab CI Pipelines — Protected Variables, Runners, and Environments

Overview GitLab CI is the second most widely used CI/CD platform in the industry, powering millions of pipelines across organizations of every size. Its tight integration with source control makes it exceptionally convenient — but that same integration creates a broad attack surface if pipelines are not deliberately hardened. In this hands-on lab you will … Read more