Universal Artifact Registry

Artifact Registries act as a universal source of truth for all build outputs, providing immutable artifact storage, reproducible builds, and reliable dependency management. They improve supply chain security by enforcing centralized governance, provenance tracking, and automated integrity checks. Modern registries also accelerate delivery through geo-replication, edge caching, and high-availability distribution so teams can pull artifacts quickly and consistently across any environment.

A package manager (like npm, pip, or Maven) is a client tool that installs and resolves dependencies. An Artifact Registry is the server-side system that stores, manages, signs, replicates, and delivers those artifacts. Package managers consume packages; registries host, secure, and govern them. Companies often host a private, fully controlled registry to mirror or proxy public ecosystems, adding governance and reliability that public registries alone can’t guarantee.

An Artifact Registry supports universal formats across the entire software supply chain, including Docker/OCI images, Helm charts, npm packages, PyPI packages, Maven/Gradle artifacts, NuGet, Go modules, Terraform modules and providers, machine learning models, Linux packages, firmware binaries, and generic files. The ability to store every artifact in one platform simplifies governance, standardizes compliance workflows, and centralizes visibility for all software assets.

Artifact Registry security is achieved through RBAC, SSO/SCIM identity integrations, immutable repositories, encryption in transit and at rest, and private networking controls such as VPC peering and IP allow-listing. Modern registries also provide artifact signing, Cosign/Sigstore verification, automated malware scanning, CVE vulnerability scanning, SBOM generation, and audit logs. These controls collectively ensure that only trusted, policy-compliant artifacts are pulled into production pipelines.

Artifact Registries guarantee deterministic builds by storing every version of every dependency immutably and making them available through stable, versioned endpoints. Because artifacts cannot be overwritten or tampered with, builds always retrieve the same content, preventing “works on my machine” issues and eliminating drift between development, staging, and production environments. Universal registries also enable dependency snapshotting and retention policies that preserve historical builds for long-term traceability.

Universal registry support avoids fragmentation by consolidating all programming language packages, container images, IaC modules, and binary assets into a single managed platform. Teams gain unified governance, consistent access controls, centralized auditability, and simplified compliance reporting. Instead of running separate tools for Docker, npm, PyPI, Helm, and Terraform, a universal registry standardizes the supply chain under one system with consistent metadata, provenance, and lifecycle management.

Artifact Registries defend against supply chain threats by blocking unverified or tampered packages, enforcing artifact signing, scanning for malicious code, validating SBOMs, enforcing dependency policies, and ensuring package provenance. Private air-gapped or isolated registries prevent direct pulls from public ecosystems, reducing exposure to compromised upstream packages. Combined with audit logs and immutable artifacts, registries provide end-to-end traceability and reduce the risk of dependency poisoning and hijacked packages.

Artifact signing ensures authenticity and integrity by cryptographically verifying that an artifact has not been modified and originates from a trusted source. Modern registries integrate with Cosign, Sigstore, GPG, and Notary v2 to automatically verify signatures during upload or download. This creates a tamper-evident supply chain where only trusted artifacts can be consumed by CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes clusters, and production systems.

Artifact Registries integrate directly with CI/CD systems by acting as the publishing endpoint for build outputs and the trusted dependency source for downstream jobs. Pipelines push artifacts after a successful build, and subsequent stages pull versioned, immutable artifacts for testing, scanning, staging, and production deployments. Integrations typically include API tokens, OIDC authentication, webhooks, provenance metadata, and policy checks that enforce compliance before an artifact can be promoted.