The DevSecOps Paradox: Why Security Automation Is Both Solving and Creating Pipeline Vulnerabilities

The numbers tell a troubling story. Forty-five percent of cyberattacks in 2024 exploited weaknesses in CI/CD pipelines , according to industry tracking data. Not application code. Not user credentials. The build and deployment infrastructure itself. This represents a fundamental shift in how attackers think. Why spend weeks crafting an exploit for production systems when you can compromise the pipeline that deploys to those systems? Poison the well, and every downstream service drinks contaminated water.