The Tool Desk
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What counts as an unexpected-action incident?
Respond when an agent takes or attempts an action outside its approved scope, or when something it does creates a credible risk to data, systems, people, or operations. Examples include:
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- An unapproved change, message, purchase, transfer, or other operation.
- A job, loop, API call, or cost that grows unexpectedly.
- Data being sent to an unexpected destination, or another user’s or project’s data being accessed.
- A secret appearing in a prompt, output, repository, screenshot, or log.
- Retrieved content or tool output changing the agent’s goal.
- An incorrect AI result influencing a consequential decision, or equipment behaving unexpectedly after an AI recommendation or action.
These examples do not imply every event has the same severity. Base the response on what the agent could access, what appears to have happened, and the possible consequences. GEAR’s examples and response guidance are in its Genesis Enterprise Reference Architecture.
What should you do first?
- Stop the workflow outside the agent. Pause or disable it through the product’s controls, orchestration layer, job runner, or another external control. Do not rely on a new prompt asking the agent to stop: a system that has already acted unexpectedly cannot be assumed to follow that instruction reliably. GEAR puts it plainly: “Stop or disable the workflow. Use the external kill path; do not rely on the model or agent to stop itself.”
- Block the access path that could cause more harm. Depending on the event, stop the running job, isolate the relevant service or tool, revoke an exposed credential, or disconnect an equipment connection. If a key or token may have been exposed, revoke and rotate it through your approved process. There is no universal kill switch that applies to every agent product; choose the control that cuts off the access involved.
- Preserve evidence before cleanup. Retain relevant prompts and context, logs, tool calls and results, affected files or resources, model and framework versions, approvals, and timestamps. Record which workflow or job you stopped and which access you isolated or revoked. Avoid deleting or altering evidence while trying to clean up, and do not place credentials or unnecessary sensitive data in a ticket or chat.
- Escalate through the accountable channel. Contact your organization’s required security or safety function and follow its incident process. If physical equipment or consequential operational decisions were involved, notify the accountable safety or operational owner too.
- Review impact and authorize recovery. Determine what happened, what resources or data may have been affected, and what corrective action is needed. Follow the system owner’s and organization’s recovery and notification procedures; there is no single rollback method that fits every incident.
Why not ask the agent to undo or explain what happened?
The agent’s account is not proof that it stopped, that no other tool call occurred, or that an action was reversed. Check job state, tool records, affected resources, and the available audit trail. An explanation can help you understand its apparent reasoning, but it should not replace independent verification.
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OWASP recommends monitoring agent activity and retaining structured decision metadata for high-risk actions in its AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet. The practical goal during response is to establish a timeline from system evidence, not to rely on a chat transcript alone.
What should an incident record contain?
Use records available in your environment to document a timeline. Include the relevant prompts and context, tool calls and results, affected files or resources, model and framework versions, approvals, and timestamps. Note what you stopped, isolated, revoked, and reviewed. Keep secrets and unnecessary sensitive information out of tickets and chat messages; use your organization’s approved secure channels for restricted evidence.
When is it safe to resume?
Do not restart simply because the agent says it is safe or because the immediate symptom has stopped. GEAR advises: “Do not resume until the cause, impact, corrective action, and required approvals are reviewed.” The relevant owners should determine whether the issue is understood, affected systems are in an acceptable state, controls have been corrected, and any required approvals are in place. If those questions remain open, keep the workflow stopped and follow the incident process.
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Use the incident to check whether the agent had more access or autonomy than its task required. OWASP’s guidance is to limit tools and permissions to what the task needs, scope access by tool and resource, and require explicit authorization for sensitive operations. A confirmation is meaningful only if the person can see what will happen: for high-impact or irreversible actions, preview the exact action and require human approval.
Enforce approval outside the model
Approval should be checked by the execution component or policy service, not merely trusted because the model says it has approval. OWASP recommends binding approval to the actor, tool, target, normalized parameters, timestamp, and expiry. For irreversible operations, it also recommends short-lived authorization and replay protection. Fail closed if risk classification, approval validation, policy lookup, or audit logging fails.
Treat external content as untrusted
Documents, messages, websites, and API responses can contain instructions that attempt to redirect an agent. OWASP describes risks including prompt injection, tool abuse, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, memory poisoning, goal hijacking, excessive autonomy, and cascading failures. These are possible mechanisms to consider during review, not a diagnosis of any particular incident.
Do not rely on one weak safeguard
GEAR cautions against treating a system prompt telling the model to behave, model confidence, agreement among multiple models, unreviewed red-team scans, unmonitored logs, or an approval control that hides the exact action and parameters as the sole protection. Use independent controls that can limit or block execution.
If ChatGPT or Codex paused a task
For a ChatGPT or Codex conversation paused as a precaution, OpenAI’s Help Center guidance is to open the review findings and compare them with the intended work and recent actions. Leave the task stopped if it is unclear whether continuing is appropriate. This advice applies to that product flow; for another agent, follow its provider’s instructions alongside your organization’s incident process.
What the evidence cannot tell you automatically
General guidance cannot determine which actions occurred in a particular case, whether data left the system, which credentials are exposed, or whether an action can be reversed. Those questions require review of the affected system’s records and the organization’s incident-response process. The reviewed official guidance establishes no universal provider stop procedure or incident-rate figure, so a specific kill path or prevalence number should not be assumed.
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