Ensuring the security and integrity of application artifacts is critical in modern software development, particularly with the continuous integration and deployment of containerized applications. JFrog Runtime offers robust mechanisms for image integrity protection and validation, which are essential in preventing unauthorized, tampered, or outdated images from being deployed in production environments. This validation process is crucial as container images, which contain application code and dependencies, pass through multiple pipeline stages, making them susceptible to various security threats such as man-in-the-middle attacks, registry spoofing, and cache poisoning. JFrog Runtime enhances security by providing real-time monitoring and validation, allowing teams to track the provenance of container images and quickly address integrity violations, thus reducing the Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR). By integrating with JFrog Artifactory, it streamlines risk identification and remediation efforts, offering end-to-end visibility and control over image management. An example of its effectiveness is illustrated with the identification and resolution of an integrity violation caused by the unreliable use of the :latest tag, which was rectified by adjusting the imagePullPolicy setting to ensure the deployment of the correct image version. This highlights the importance of implementing robust validation practices and maintaining consistent configurations to secure software environments against unauthorized changes.