Chainguard vs Cycode

About Chainguard

Chainguard sells hardened open source artifacts that replace vulnerable or malicious versions found publicly. Chainguard says it aims to eliminate malware and vulnerability risk across containers, dependencies, CI/CD actions and AI agent skills. Chainguard hardens open source before developers start writing a single line of code.^[1][10]

Chainguard offers container images for over 3,000 projects, and hundreds of Helm charts, rebuilt continuously by AI reconciler agents in a SLSA Level 3 environment. Every Chainguard image ships with Sigstore signatures, a signed SBOM and SLSA L2 provenance. Chainguard Factory tracks upstream changes, triggers clean rebuilds and publishes new images with updated SBOMs and provenance. Custom Assembly configures Chainguard Factory to build images to a customer's specifications, using 30,000+ packages. Chainguard gives direct access to the APKs underpinning entitled Chainguard Containers. Chainguard offers updated EOL images with low-to-zero CVEs for up to 6 months to help teams transition off legacy software. Chainguard extends its secure-by-default standard to commercial ISV software.^[1][10]

Chainguard offers over 1,200 FIPS-validated container variants and OS-level STIG hardening for regulated environments. Chainguard says zero-CVE images, signed SBOMs and full provenance simplify compliance across frameworks like FedRAMP, PCI DSS, SOC 2, CMMC and CRA. Chainguard says PCI DSS vulnerability management requirements create significant overhead for vendors handling cardholder data. Chainguard says Shift5 saved 2.5 months of engineering time per person on CVE remediation. Chainguard says Canva dodged hundreds of thousands of malware attacks on npm and PyPI. Chainguard says the Army Software Factory freed up 40% of developer time for mission-enabling innovation.^[10][11][13]

Chainguard Libraries is a malware-free catalog of open source dependencies. Chainguard offers a catalog of Python, Java, JavaScript, Go and .NET packages so teams can turn off live access to public registries. Chainguard says customers switch standard registry endpoints to Chainguard to prevent malware and shrink the CVE backlog. Chainguard Libraries works with existing artifact managers and workflows. Chainguard says every Chainguard-built version comes with full provenance and signed SBOMs. Chainguard says every remediated package includes embedded SLSA L3 provenance and SBOMs. Chainguard says every package is scanned for malicious behavior before distribution. Chainguard Repository provides every package needed on day one and lets customers configure cooldowns.^[12]

Chainguard VMs are minimal Linux images based on Chainguard OS and come in three types. Chainguard VMs include only the essential components for running containers: a Linux kernel, systemd, glibc, and optional userspace tools like SSH. Chainguard VMs support AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and on-premise hypervisors including VMware, Nutanix and OpenStack. Chainguard VMs carry a CVE remediation SLA of 7 days for critical and 14 days for high, medium, and low through automated rebuilds. Chainguard VMs support kernel-independent FIPS 140-3-validated cryptography. Chainguard VMs offer DISA STIG hardening and CIS Benchmark Level 1 hardening.^[13]

Chainguard offers 30,000+ zero-CVE packages, including every package powering Chainguard Containers. Chainguard says secure packages can be swapped in whether a team builds with Bazel, Melange, Dockerfiles or another tool. Chainguard says every artifact ships with build-time generated SBOMs. Chainguard OS Packages has a FIPS variant built with the latest versions of Chainguard's FIPS-validated cryptographic modules. Chainguard offers a catalog of 1,000+ hardened third-party actions. Chainguard Actions are drop-in replacements for upstream GitHub Actions. Chainguard re-verifies and rehardens every action whenever its upstream version changes or a new attack pattern emerges. Every Chainguard Action ships with a full hardening report. Chainguard Guardener analyzes and rebuilds Dockerfiles layer by layer, maps packages and tests incrementally. Guardener opens a migration pull request for all actions with a drop-in Chainguard equivalent. Chainguard offers 1,000+ hardened community skills that are safe from malicious instructions.^{[10][14][15][16]}

Chainguard says reconciler bots and AI agents run continuously across its entire catalog. Chainguard says every package is rebuilt from source in an isolated SLSA L3 environment on its own minimal OS. Chainguard says every build starts with an immutable SHA reference to the upstream source. Chainguard says it signs every artifact it ships. Chainguard says every image is rebuilt with a separate apko toolchain to produce a bitwise-equivalent result.^[1][17]

Chainguard Checks runs CI inside Chainguard microVMs that produce cryptographically signed attestations. Chainguard Checks is currently in beta and is a Technology Preview. Chainguard Workspaces isolates untrusted code inside Chainguard-hardened microVMs. Chainguard Workspaces is currently in beta and is a Technology Preview. Chainguard Harness builds an application from source in an isolated environment and lets Mythos 5.1 hunt through a live instance for exploitable vulnerabilities. Chainguard Harness is currently in beta and is a Technology Preview.^{[1][4][6][18][19][20]}