AI red teaming is structured adversarial testing of an AI system. It explores how the system might behave outside its intended boundaries, including under misleading inputs, untrusted content or attempts to misuse connected tools.
What changes when the AI is an agent?
For an agent, a harmful result can be an action rather than a sentence. The assessment must examine the path from input to tool use and business outcome. A test should ask whether a request can cross a real permission or data boundary.
An illustrative scenario: an account-review agent reads a document containing instructions to update an unrelated record. The assessment checks whether the agent treats that document as data, whether the requested operation is within scope and whether the attempted action is captured in evidence.
How is it different from functional testing?
| Functional testing | AI red teaming |
|---|---|
| Checks expected behavior | Challenges safety and security boundaries |
| Uses representative valid tasks | Uses adversarial and unexpected scenarios |
| Confirms a workflow completes | Examines whether an unwanted action can occur |
What should an assessment produce?
A useful finding identifies the tested scenario, observed behavior, affected boundary and evidence. It should help the team decide what to change: application logic, tool access, a policy, a guardrail or a human approval step.
Scope matters. A result applies to the evaluated configuration and conditions. It does not establish that every possible attack has been found or that the application will remain safe after changes.
A responsible assessment sequence
- Agree on authorization, environment and test boundaries.
- Identify business actions, tools and data at risk.
- Run the selected adversarial scenarios.
- Review findings with evidence and business context.
- Implement controls and retest relevant behavior.
Explore ARGUS
AGMIO ARGUS supports vulnerability assessment for agentic workflows, using business and application context to inform threat scenarios and proposed controls.