Learning Paths
Defense in Depth
Walk through the distinct control planes, from provenance to incident response and adversarial testing, and learn what each one decides and what it does not.
- Audience
- Security architects, AppSec teams, technical leads
- Approximate time
- About 3 to 4 hours
- Prerequisites
- Foundations path; Agents path recommended
Learning objectives
- Name what each control plane decides
- Avoid collapsing trust, authorization, flow and reachability into one score
- Explain why deterministic controls are fixed rather than only adding prompts or classifiers
- Plan response and testing around evidence states
Path sequence
01 Starting point
02 Evidence about content
- 02 - DefenseData Provenance
Tracks where content came from so later decisions can use origin as evidence.
- 03 - Lab - Controlled simulationData Provenance (Lab)
Judge whether a provenance record is valid evidence in a controlled simulation.
- 04 - DefenseInput / Content Inspection
Inspection produces probabilistic evidence, not authorization.
- 05 - DefensePrompt Injection Detection
Detection findings are signals to act on, not proof of compromise or a permission decision.
03 Deterministic decisions
- 06 - DefenseAgent Authorization
Decides deterministically whether a resolved action may execute, independent of what the model proposed.
- 07 - DefenseInformation Flow Control
Governs whether specific data may move to a specific sink.
- 08 - Lab - Controlled simulationInformation Flow Control (Lab)
Decide whether specific data may move to a specific sink in a controlled simulation.
- 09 - DefenseOutput Validation
Validates structure; sink-specific encoding and permission remain separate.
04 Blast-radius limits
- 10 - DefenseLeast Privilege
Limits which identities, tools and capabilities exist at all.
- 11 - Lab - Controlled simulationLeast Privilege (Lab)
Judge whether an authority envelope is minimized for its task in a controlled simulation.
- 12 - DefenseNetwork / Egress Restrictions
Controls which network paths exist, separately from action authorization.
- 13 - Lab - Controlled simulationNetwork / Egress Restrictions (Lab)
Decide whether a workload may reach a resolved destination in a controlled simulation.
- 14 - DefenseSandboxing / Containment
Caps the blast radius of influenced execution without making output trusted.
05 Operations
- 15 - DefenseIncident Response
Responds by evidence state, from suspicious content to confirmed impact.
- 16 - Lab - Controlled simulationIncident Investigation (Lab)
Classify synthetic evidence as confirmed impact or not yet confirmed in a controlled simulation.
- 17 - DefenseAdversarial Testing
Tests find weaknesses; a passed test does not prove security.
06 Architecture practice and research
- 18 - Lab - Controlled simulationTrust Boundaries and Model Context (Lab)
Practice separating source, representation and trust in a controlled simulation.
- 19 - ResearchCaMeL - Defeating Prompt Injections by Design
One architecture example that separates control and data flow; a single paper, not a universal standard.
Go deeper (optional)
- DefenseSpotlighting / Data Marking
A probabilistic aid for separating data from instructions.
- DefenseHuman-in-the-Loop
Exact-action-bound approval as an additional gate.
- DefensePlan Drift Detection
Task-alignment evidence for agents.
- DefenseTool-Chain Analysis
Sequence-level evidence for agents.
- ResearchSystematic Review of Prompt Injection Defenses (2026)
An overview of heterogeneous defense evidence.
Knowledge check
Think through each question, then open it to compare with the expected reasoning. There is no score.
A strong detector is in place. Can authorization checks be relaxed?
No. Detection is probabilistic evidence; authorization is a deterministic decision. Each must hold when the other misses.
An output passed schema validation. Is it safe to insert into HTML?
Not by itself. Validation checks structure; sink-specific encoding or escaping is still required at the destination.
A sandbox is in place. Does that decide whether data may leave?
No. Containment caps side effects; information flow control and egress policy decide data release and network reach.
After this path, you should be able to...
- Map each control to the decision it owns
- Design layered defenses without a blended trust score
- Plan incident response around evidence states
- Interpret adversarial test results without overclaiming