HIP-240: AI Incident Response. Status Draft. Hanzo's own standard — read this before implementing against it.
This HIP establishes the incident response framework for AI safety and ethics incidents at Hanzo AI. It defines incident categories, response procedures, communication protocols, and post-incident review processes.
An AI incident is any event where an AI system:
| Category | Examples | |----------|----------| | Harmful output | Generated dangerous, illegal, or harmful content | | Safety bypass | Successful jailbreak or guardrail circumvention | | Misuse | System used for malicious purposes | | Unintended capability | System displays unexpected capabilities |
| Category | Examples | |----------|----------| | Quality degradation | Significant accuracy decrease | | Hallucination spike | Increased false information | | Availability failure | Service outage or degradation | | Latency issues | Unacceptable response times |
| Category | Examples | |----------|----------| | Bias detection | Systematic bias discovered | | Discrimination | Unfair treatment of user groups | | Exclusion | Groups unable to use service |
| Category | Examples | |----------|----------| | Data breach | Training data or user data exposed | | Model theft | Unauthorized model extraction | | Adversarial attack | Successful attack on model | | Prompt injection | System manipulation via inputs |
| Level | Definition | Examples | |-------|------------|----------| | Critical (P0) | Immediate, severe harm potential | CSAM generation, weapons instructions, mass harm | | High (P1) | Significant harm or widespread impact | Widespread harmful content, major bias issue | | Medium (P2) | Moderate harm or limited impact | Isolated harmful outputs, localized issues | | Low (P3) | Minor issues, low harm potential | Edge cases, minor quality issues |
| Factor | Considerations | |--------|----------------| | Harm potential | Type and severity of possible harm | | Scope | Number of users affected | | Reversibility | Can harm be undone? | | Exploitability | How easily can this be reproduced? | | Visibility | Public awareness level |
Detection → Triage → Containment → Investigation → Remediation → Recovery → Review| Source | Examples | |--------|----------| | Automated monitoring | Safety classifiers, anomaly detection | | User reports | Bug reports, safety reports | | Internal discovery | Employee observation, testing | | External reports | Security researchers, media | | Third-party | Partners, regulators |
| Channel | For | |---------|-----| | Safety hotline | Internal urgent reports | | Safety email | Internal non-urgent reports | | Bug bounty | External security reports | | Support channels | User reports | | Executive escalation | Critical issues |
| Step | Action | |------|--------| | 1 | Validate incident is real | | 2 | Determine severity level | | 3 | Identify affected systems | | 4 | Assign incident commander | | 5 | Notify required stakeholders |
| Question | Purpose | |----------|---------| | What happened? | Understand the incident | | Who is affected? | Scope assessment | | Is it ongoing? | Urgency determination | | Can it be reproduced? | Exploitability | | What's the harm potential? | Severity rating |
| Severity | Response Time | Actions | |----------|---------------|---------| | P0 | Immediate | Emergency shutdown if needed, immediate patch | | P1 | <1 hour | Feature disable, rate limiting, filter deployment | | P2 | <4 hours | Targeted mitigations, monitoring increase | | P3 | <24 hours | Standard fix process |
| Action | Use Case | |--------|----------| | Kill switch | Immediate system shutdown (P0 only) | | Feature disable | Turn off affected feature | | Rate limiting | Slow down potential abuse | | Filter deployment | Block specific inputs/outputs | | Model rollback | Revert to previous version | | Access restriction | Limit affected user access |
| Area | Questions | |------|-----------| | Root cause | Why did this happen? | | Timeline | When did it start? How long active? | | Impact | Who/what was affected? How severely? | | Detection | Why wasn't this caught earlier? | | Similar issues | Are there related vulnerabilities? |
| Evidence Type | Collection Method | |---------------|-------------------| | Logs | System logs, API logs, safety logs | | Outputs | Examples of problematic outputs | | Inputs | Triggering inputs/prompts | | Metrics | Relevant monitoring data | | User reports | All related user feedback |
| Role | Responsibility | |------|----------------| | Incident Commander | Overall coordination | | Technical Lead | Technical investigation | | Safety Lead | Safety assessment | | Legal | Legal implications (if needed) | | Communications | External communication prep |
| Element | Description | |---------|-------------| | Fix identification | Determine appropriate fix | | Testing | Verify fix works, no regressions | | Deployment plan | How to roll out fix | | Validation | How to confirm resolution |
| Fix Type | Timeline | Use Case | |----------|----------|----------| | Hotfix | Immediate | Critical safety issues | | Patch | <24 hours | High-priority fixes | | Update | Standard release | Medium/low priority | | Major change | Planned release | Significant changes needed |
| Check | Method | |-------|--------| | Issue resolved | Reproduce attempt fails | | No regressions | Standard tests pass | | Performance normal | Metrics within bounds | | User experience | Sample verification |
| Severity | Review Timeline | |----------|-----------------| | P0 | Within 72 hours | | P1 | Within 1 week | | P2 | Within 2 weeks | | P3 | Monthly batch review |
| Section | Contents | |---------|----------| | Summary | What happened, when, impact | | Timeline | Detailed event sequence | | Root cause | Why it happened | | Response | What we did | | Impact | Users/systems affected | | Lessons learned | What we learned | | Action items | Preventive measures |
| Severity | Immediate | Within 1 Hour | Within 24 Hours | |----------|-----------|---------------|-----------------| | P0 | CEO, CTO, Legal, Safety Lead | ESG Committee, Board | All leadership | | P1 | CTO, Safety Lead | Product Lead, ESG Committee | Department heads | | P2 | Safety Lead | Product Lead | Team leads | | P3 | Team lead | - | - |
| Channel | Use | |---------|-----| | War room (P0/P1) | Real-time coordination | | Incident Slack | Updates, coordination | | Email | Formal notifications | | Ticket | Tracking, documentation |
Is public aware?
↓ Yes ↓ No
Proactive comms Is disclosure required?
↓ ↓ Yes ↓ No
Disclose Monitor| Situation | Elements | |-----------|----------| | Initial acknowledgment | We're aware, investigating, user steps | | Update | What we know, what we're doing, timeline | | Resolution | What happened, what we did, preventive measures |
| Trigger | Disclosure | |---------|------------| | User data affected | Required notification (per jurisdiction) | | Significant public harm | Proactive disclosure recommended | | Regulatory requirement | Per applicable law | | Media inquiry | Coordinated response |
| Role | Responsibility | On-Call | |------|----------------|---------| | Incident Commander | Overall coordination | 24/7 rotation | | Technical Lead | Technical investigation/fix | 24/7 rotation | | Safety Lead | Safety assessment | 24/7 rotation | | Communications Lead | External communications | Business hours + on-call | | Legal | Legal assessment | On-call |
| Decision | Authority | |----------|-----------| | Containment actions | Incident Commander | | Model shutdown | CTO or CEO | | External communication | Communications + Legal | | Regulatory notification | Legal + CEO |
| Metric | Target | |--------|--------| | Time to detection | Reduce over time | | Time to containment | <1 hour for P0/P1 | | Time to resolution | Per severity SLAs | | Recurrence rate | Zero recurrence of same issue |
| Activity | Frequency | |----------|-----------| | Incident response training | Annual for all team | | Tabletop exercises | Quarterly | | Full drills | Biannual | | Red team exercises | Continuous |
| Version | Date | Changes | |---------|------|---------| | 1.0 | 2025-12-17 | Initial draft |
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