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Failure posture

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What a guardrail, guardian agent or tool gateway does when it cannot reach a decision: fail open lets the call through, fail closed blocks it. The reference guardian of the OWASP Agent Control Standard starts at proceed unless set to deny 1. The posture is a governance decision, set per operation class and recorded in the agent's Policy Card.

Developed in
ch. 23, Runtime guardrails for tool calls
Chapters
ch. 23, AI Agents
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Failure posture: mentions per chapter1 mention of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter23 AI Agents: 1 mention23 AI Agents1No mentions in the other 22 chaptersSource: the Body of Knowledgev0.5.0
Failure posture: mentions per chapter1 mention of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter0001020304050607081011121314151617181920212223 AI Agents: 1 mention123Source: the Body of Knowledge v0.5.0
Mentions per chapter How often each chapter names the term, with the chapters the glossary cross-references drawn solid. The longest bar is where to read the term in use; bars spread across many chapters mark a term that runs through the discipline.
Mentions as a table
Mentions of Failure posture per chapter
ChapterMentionsCross-referenced
00 Preface0No
01 Definition0No
02 Why Now0No
03 Values & Principles0No
04 The Stack0No
05 Patterns0No
06 The Role0No
07 Maturity Model0No
08 Regulatory Map0No
10 Reading List0No
11 AI Defined0No
12 Governance Program0No
13 Risk Management0No
14 Development0No
15 Deployment0No
16 Fairness & XAI0No
17 Incidents0No
18 EU AI Act0No
19 Privacy & AI0No
20 Existing Law0No
21 AI Laws Worldwide0No
22 Principles & Standards0No
23 AI Agents1Yes
Failure posture: related terms and patternsThe term at the centre; related terms on solid edges, the terms it is contrasted with on dashed edges, and the patterns that use it most in the colour of their layer.RelatedFailure postureRelated terms (3)Guardian agent · RelatedGuardian agentGuardrail · RelatedGuardrailPolicy Card · RelatedPolicy Card
Failure posture: related terms and patternsThe term at the centre; related terms on solid edges, the terms it is contrasted with on dashed edges, and the patterns that use it most in the colour of their layer.RelatedRelated terms (3)Guardian agent · RelatedGuardian agentGuardrail · RelatedGuardrailPolicy Card · RelatedPolicy CardFailure posture
The term's neighbourhood Terms related to this one on solid edges, terms it is often confused with on dashed edges, and the patterns that use it most in the colour of their layer. Follow a dashed edge to check the distinction before you use either term.
Neighbourhood as a table
Neighbourhood of Failure posture
FamilyItemRelation
Related termsGuardian agentRelated
Related termsGuardrailRelated
Related termsPolicy CardRelated
  • Guardian agent

    An AI agent whose job is to supervise, check or constrain other agents at runtime; Gartner predicts guardian-agent technologies will account for at least 10…

  • Guardrail

    A runtime control that inspects or mediates a model's or agent's inputs, outputs or tool calls and blocks, rewrites or escalates what breaks a policy, logging…

  • Policy Card

    A JSON-schema, machine-readable governance artefact that declares an agent's allowed and forbidden behaviours for runtime enforcement.

Sources

  1. [1] Agent Control Standard (ACS) repository (a wire specification that lets a separate guardian agent permit, deny or modify an agent's action before it happens; the reference guardian's failure posture defaults to proceed, overridable to deny; donated to the OWASP GenAI Security Project, announced 1 Sep 2026). OWASP GenAI Security Project (GitHub). 2026-09-01. https://github.com/GenAI-Security-Project/agent-control-standard (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Failure posture. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/failure-posture. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026failureposture,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Failure posture}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/failure-posture}
}