Quarantine

For: Platform operators and security teams managing automatic blocking of high-risk requests.

Operations Overview | Approval Workflows | Quarantine | Risk Scoring | CP Connectivity | Telemetry

A quarantine policy decision blocks the request immediately (HTTP 403) and records a quarantine entry server-side for operator review. Unlike deny, which stops the request with no follow-up, quarantine entries persist and can be investigated, released, or used to tune policy thresholds.

Table of Contents

• Quarantine vs Deny vs Approval
• Triggering quarantine in Policy
• Quarantine Entry Lifecycle
• Reviewing Quarantine Entries
• Releasing a Quarantine Entry
• Caller-Visible Response
• Admin API Reference
• Quarantine Entry Fields
• Prometheus Metrics
• Troubleshooting
• See Also

Quarantine vs Deny vs Approval

Use quarantine when you want to block and flag for investigation. The caller receives 403 (same as deny) but the entry appears in the quarantine queue for your ops team.

Triggering quarantine in Policy

Add a rule with effect.decision: quarantine in any policy layer. The risk layer is the most common location:

risk:
  - id: risk.quarantine.high_score
    priority: 100
    when:
      field: context.risk.score
      gt: "0.8"
    effect:
      decision: quarantine
      reason: "composite risk score exceeds threshold"

  - id: risk.quarantine.rate_spike
    priority: 90
    when:
      all:
        - field: context.risk.signals
          operator: in
          value: "rate_spike"
        - field: context.risk.score
          gt: "0.6"
    effect:
      decision: quarantine
      reason: "rate spike detected — workload quarantined"

You can also quarantine from other layers:

# In the targets layer: block and flag requests to disallowed targets
targets:
  - id: targets.quarantine.unknown_host
    priority: 50
    when:
      field: action.target_host
      operator: not_in
      value: "api.openai.com,api.anthropic.com"
    effect:
      decision: quarantine
      reason: "request to unregistered target — requires review"

Quarantine Entry Lifecycle

• Quarantine entries do not expire automatically.
• Releasing an entry removes the quarantine flag for that workload/request pattern; it does not automatically allow future requests. Future requests are re-evaluated against policy.
• The entry record persists after release for audit purposes.

Reviewing Quarantine Entries

List active quarantine entries for an org:

curl -s "http://localhost:7080/v1/admin/quarantine?org_id=org-example-001&limit=20" \
  -H "MVGC-Admin-Token: $MVGC_ADMIN_TOKEN" | jq .

Filter by workload:

curl -s "http://localhost:7080/v1/admin/quarantine?org_id=org-example-001&workload_id=wl-prod-app-1" \
  -H "MVGC-Admin-Token: $MVGC_ADMIN_TOKEN" | jq .

Example entry:

{
  "quarantine_id": "01955f3e-aaaa-7abc-8def-000000000001",
  "org_id": "org-example-001",
  "workload_id": "wl-prod-app-1",
  "caller_id": "service-abc",
  "caller_ip": "10.0.1.42",
  "action_type": "ai.infer",
  "reason": "composite risk score exceeds threshold",
  "risk_score": 0.87,
  "created_at": "2026-03-12T10:15:00Z",
  "released_at": null,
  "released_by": null
}

The quarantine_id is not included in the HTTP 403 response; the entry is written server-side. Use the list endpoint to find entries for a workload.

Releasing a Quarantine Entry

To release a specific entry after investigation:

QUARANTINE_ID="01955f3e-aaaa-7abc-8def-000000000001"

curl -s -X POST "http://localhost:7080/v1/admin/quarantine/$QUARANTINE_ID/release" \
  -H "MVGC-Admin-Token: $MVGC_ADMIN_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"released_by": "ops-admin@example.com"}' | jq .

After release, the quarantine entry is marked with released_at and released_by. Subsequent requests from the workload are re-evaluated against policy: if the risk score has dropped below threshold, they will proceed normally.

Caller-Visible Response

The caller receives a standard 403 response. The quarantine_id is not exposed:

{
  "decision": "quarantine",
  "reason": "composite risk score exceeds threshold",
  "record_id": "01955f3e-cccc-7abc-8def-000000000003"
}

The caller cannot distinguish a quarantine 403 from a deny 403 by HTTP status alone. Use the decision field in the JSON response body to differentiate.

Admin API Reference

All admin endpoints require the MVGC-Admin-Token header.

Quarantine Entry Fields

Prometheus Metrics

Alert on a sudden increase in mvgc_quarantine_total to detect workloads behaving anomalously.

Troubleshooting

See Also

• Risk Scoring — the signals that most commonly trigger quarantine
• Approval Workflows — use require_approval for hold-not-block
• Network Operations Guide — full policy DSL and decision reference
• Telemetry — mvgc_quarantine_total metric and SIEM quarantine events
• Glossary — quarantine