Software supply chain attacks have surged in recent years, making code signing more important than ever. Yet many organisations still treat it as an afterthought — or worse, rely on proprietary tools with opaque trust models.
Code signing provides a cryptographic guarantee that software hasn't been tampered with since it was built. When done correctly, it creates an unbroken chain of trust from the developer's workstation to the end user's machine.
Open source code signing tools like OSSSign bring transparency to this critical process. Unlike proprietary solutions, the signing algorithms, key management practices, and verification logic are all open for inspection. This means the security community can audit, improve, and trust the tooling.
The Sigstore project has pioneered keyless signing using short-lived certificates tied to developer identities. OSSSign builds on these foundations while adding features specifically designed for enterprise environments — including integration with hardware security modules, policy-based signing workflows, and audit trails.
Getting started with code signing doesn't have to be complex. Begin by signing your CI/CD artifacts — container images, binaries, and packages. Then gradually extend signing to infrastructure-as-code templates, configuration files, and deployment manifests. The goal is to make unsigned artifacts the exception, not the norm.