Using an artifactory instance as the origin is not functionally different from installing something 'willy nilly' from the internet. It addresses a narrow range of threats while predominantly being more reliable and faster than public repositories.

It doesn't fix the actual problems with C++, which is that it's significantly more difficult to get and use external dependencies because of the compilation and linkage model of C++ libraries.

If C++ were as easy to build and link as modern programming languages you'd see the same kinds of tools as cargo, and the same kinds of ecosystem evolution as rust, like tokio. But you don't, because C++ code sucks to build, package, distribute, update, and reuse.

(I'm aware/have used conan/meson/vcpkg/etc - doesn't change my opinion).