In cyber security, pedigree means validated evidence about the composition and provenance of a technology, product, or service. It answers practical questions such as what the item contains, where it came from, who handled it, and whether its history matches the claims made by a supplier or vendor.
Pedigree matters because attackers often exploit uncertainty in supply chains, software builds, and third-party services. A component with weak or unknown pedigree may hide counterfeit parts, tampered firmware, untrusted dependencies, or altered records. Defenders use pedigree information to support due diligence, authenticity checks, and supply chain risk management. In practice, this can include signed build records, bills of materials, chain-of-custody logs, and provenance metadata that can be verified across organizations. Pedigree does not prove a product is safe by itself, but it makes trust measurable instead of assumed.