A new approach to customer support that protects working artifacts through their entire lifecycle by provisioning, on-demand, a transient-controlled debugging environment that preferably is associated with a particular support issue (or subset of issues) when particular artifacts (e.g., files) are securely received at the service or software provider. This approach allows for complete (or substantially complete) isolation and control of the artifacts in a contained environment for so long as necessary by the provider. Preferably, the provider owns or otherwise manages the provisioned environment, which can be augmented as needed to meet the debugging requirements of the particular issue. Preferably, the provisioned environment is restricted in access to only those engineers or others with a verifiable need to know, or that have the necessary training and skill sets for the support operation required.