Red teaming

Test the live Sector8 contract: routed action, expected decision, evidence fields, and fail-closed behavior.

Sector8 red teams the execution boundary itself: whether a routed agent action receives the expected ALLOW or DENY decision before side effects start, plus review behavior on review-enabled guard paths.

Every AI security tool tests what your model says. Sector8 tests what your agents can do on paths routed through the gate.

The challenge

Models change. Agents act.

A prompt-only assessment does not tell you what happens when an agent can read files, call tools, hit APIs, or operate across business systems.

Agents expand the blast radius

Once an agent has tool access, the real risk is data access, cross-scope reads, shell misuse, SSRF, and policy bypass on ungoverned paths.

Most tools stop too early

They test prompts and responses. They do not test the evaluate-before-dispatch contract where business risk actually happens.

Sector8’s approach

Red team the real integration contract:

1. Route a proposed action through Sector8
2. Expect a specific decision (ALLOW or DENY) or a review pause on review-enabled guard paths
3. Confirm evidence fields are present
4. Confirm the runtime honors the decision and fails closed on unknown/error

What that means in practice:

• test real tool, SDK, REST evaluate, and MCP-connected paths
• test authorization and ownership failures
• test whether a routed agent can exfiltrate data, cross tenant boundaries, hit private infrastructure, or violate policy before execution
• confirm unconnected paths are treated as out of coverage, not assumed protected

The goal is not only to prove that a model can say something risky. The goal is to prove whether a routed agent action is decided and honored correctly before execution.

How red teaming works

1. Exercise real agent workflows

   Test tool use, file access, web access, shell actions, MCP servers, and cross-system agent behavior on the paths you actually route through Sector8.

2. Target the evaluate boundary

   Probe the decision point that determines whether the agent may act, not only what the model says.

3. Assert the contract

   For each case, record:

   Check	Pass condition
   Routed action	Proposed action went through evaluate or the Sector8 connector
   Expected decision	ALLOW or DENY matched the case design; review-enabled paths paused when expected
   Evidence fields	reason_code, decision_trace_id, evidence_hash, and policy_version_id present as expected
   Runtime honor	App dispatched only on ALLOW; blocked on DENY; review-enabled paths paused when expected
   Fail-closed	Missing, unknown, error, or timeout did not execute

4. Feed runtime protection

   Turn findings into deny reasons, review policies, alert signatures, traces, and enforcement improvements.

What Sector8 tests

Area	What gets tested
Tool execution	whether the agent can invoke the wrong tool or invoke the right tool in the wrong context on a routed path
Ownership and scope	cross-tenant reads, BOLA, BFLA, and unauthorized object access
Request risk	SSRF, private IP access, external-domain misuse, shell injection, obfuscated payloads
Sensitive data movement	PII, PHI, and policy-protected data before execution
MCP and agent workflows	whether real multi-step agent paths create unsafe action sequences
Fail-closed behavior	whether evaluate unavailability or unknown decisions prevent dispatch

Why this is different

Most AI security tools

Test prompts and outputs, then report what the model said or might have said.

Sector8

Tests whether the routed execution boundary returns the expected decision and whether the runtime honors it before side effects start.

Stronger together

Sector8 red teaming is not a separate reporting surface. It validates the live gate contract.

• red teaming validates whether dangerous routed actions are denied or sent to review before execution
• runtime protection improves as findings become deny paths, review rules, and policy updates
• telemetry and framework mappings stay grounded in what was actually exploitable on governed paths

See related guides:

• Guardrails
• Evaluate
• Compliance overview
• EU AI Act

Red teaming is complete when you can show a routed action, the expected decision, the evidence fields, runtime honor behavior, and fail-closed handling — not only that a prompt looked risky.