# Federal Contractors Verify Container Image Provenance

A Cloud Native Now article cautions that a container image with no known CVEs is not necessarily trustworthy: vulnerability scans do not identify who produced the image, verify its contents, or show whether its build process was compromised. For government procurement teams and contractors, the implication is to treat scanning as one part of software supply-chain assurance, alongside image signatures, provenance, software composition evidence, minimal images, and reassessment as vulnerability information changes.

- Procurement teams can evaluate supplier evidence for image origin, build integrity, and contents in addition to vulnerability scan results.
- Contractors can strengthen their assurance practices by combining scans with image signatures, provenance records, software composition evidence, and minimal images.
- Ongoing reassessment is relevant because vulnerability data changes; a clean scan at one point in time does not establish continuing trustworthiness.

**Jurisdictions:** federal
**Industries:** Information Technology
**Topics:** Cybersecurity
**Published:** October 13, 2026

### Sources
- [A Container Image Can Be Vulnerability-Free and Still Not Be Trustworthy - Cloud Native Now](https://cloudnativenow.com/contributed-content/a-container-image-can-be-vulnerability-free-and-still-not-be-trustworthy) - Cloud Native Now