Advanced Guardrails

Advanced Guardrails

Production LLM safety using NeMo Guardrails, Guardrails AI, and OpenAI moderation with red-teaming validation.

NeMo Guardrails 2026: LangChain 1.x compatible, parallel rails execution, OpenTelemetry tracing. DeepTeam: 40+ vulnerabilities, OWASP Top 10 alignment.

Overview

• Implementing input/output validation for LLM applications
• Preventing hallucinations and enforcing factuality
• Detecting and filtering toxic, harmful, or off-topic content
• Restricting LLM responses to specific domains/topics
• PII detection and redaction in LLM outputs
• Red-teaming and adversarial testing of LLM systems
• OWASP Top 10 for LLMs compliance

Framework Comparison

Quick Reference

NeMo Guardrails with Guardrails AI Integration

# config.yml
models:
  - type: main
    engine: openai
    model: gpt-4o

rails:
  config:
    guardrails_ai:
      validators:
        - name: toxic_language
          parameters:
            threshold: 0.5
            validation_method: "sentence"
        - name: guardrails_pii
          parameters:
            entities: ["phone_number", "email", "ssn", "credit_card"]
        - name: restricttotopic
          parameters:
            valid_topics: ["technology", "support"]
        - name: valid_length
          parameters:
            min: 10
            max: 500

  input:
    flows:
      - guardrailsai check input $validator="guardrails_pii"
      - guardrailsai check input $validator="competitor_check"

  output:
    flows:
      - guardrailsai check output $validator="toxic_language"
      - guardrailsai check output $validator="restricttotopic"
      - guardrailsai check output $validator="valid_length"

Colang 2.0 Fact-Checking Rails

define flow answer question with facts
  """Enable fact-checking for RAG responses."""
  user ...
  $answer = execute rag()
  $check_facts = True  # Enables fact-checking rail
  bot $answer

define flow check hallucination
  """Block responses about people without verification."""
  user ask about people
  $check_hallucination = True  # Blocking mode
  bot respond about people

define flow restrict competitor mentions
  """Prevent discussing competitor products."""
  user ask about $competitor
  if $competitor in ["CompetitorA", "CompetitorB"]
    bot "I can only discuss our products."
  else
    bot respond normally

Guardrails AI Validators

from guardrails import Guard
from guardrails.hub import (
    ToxicLanguage,
    DetectPII,
    RestrictToTopic,
    ValidLength,
    ResponseEvaluator,
)

# Create guard with multiple validators
guard = Guard().use_many(
    ToxicLanguage(threshold=0.5,
    DetectPII(
        pii_entities=["EMAIL_ADDRESS", "PHONE_NUMBER", "SSN"],
         # Redacts PII
    ),
    RestrictToTopic(
        valid_topics=["technology", "customer support"],
        invalid_topics=["politics", "religion"],
       
    ),
    ValidLength(min=10, max=500,
)

# Validate LLM output
result = guard(
    llm_api=openai.chat.completions.create,
    model="gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": user_input}],
)

if result.validation_passed:
    return result.validated_output
else:
    return "I cannot respond to that request."

DeepTeam Red Teaming

from deepteam import red_team
from deepteam.vulnerabilities import (
    Bias, Toxicity, PIILeakage,
    PromptInjection, Jailbreaking,
    Misinformation, CompetitorEndorsement
)

async def run_red_team_audit(
    target_model: callable,
    attacks_per_vulnerability: int = 10
) -> dict:
    """Run comprehensive red team audit against target LLM."""
    results = await red_team(
        model=target_model,
        vulnerabilities=[
            Bias(categories=["gender", "race", "religion", "age"]),
            Toxicity(threshold=0.7),
            PIILeakage(types=["email", "phone", "ssn", "credit_card"]),
            PromptInjection(techniques=["direct", "indirect", "context"]),
            Jailbreaking(
                multi_turn=True,  # GOAT-style multi-turn attacks
                techniques=["dan", "roleplay", "context_manipulation"]
            ),
            Misinformation(domains=["health", "finance", "legal"]),
            CompetitorEndorsement(competitors=["competitor_list"]),
        ],
        attacks_per_vulnerability=attacks_per_vulnerability,
    )

    return {
        "total_attacks": results.total_attacks,
        "successful_attacks": results.successful_attacks,
        "attack_success_rate": results.successful_attacks / results.total_attacks,
        "vulnerabilities": [
            {
                "type": v.type,
                "severity": v.severity,
                "successful_prompts": v.successful_prompts[:3],
                "mitigation": v.suggested_mitigation,
            }
            for v in results.vulnerabilities
        ],
    }

OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025 Mapping

Anti-Patterns (FORBIDDEN)

# NEVER trust LLM output without validation
response = llm.generate(prompt)
return response  # Raw, unvalidated output!

# NEVER skip input sanitization
user_input = request.json["message"]
llm.generate(user_input)  # Prompt injection risk!

# NEVER use single validation layer
if not is_toxic(output):  # Only one check
    return output

# ALWAYS use layered validation
guard = Guard().use_many(
    ToxicLanguage(threshold=0.5),
    DetectPII(on_fail="fix"),
    ValidLength(max=500),
)

# ALWAYS validate both input and output
input_result = input_guard.validate(user_input)
if not input_result.validation_passed:
    return "Invalid input"

llm_output = llm.generate(input_result.validated_output)

output_result = output_guard.validate(llm_output)
return output_result.validated_output

Key Decisions

Detailed Documentation

Related Skills

• llm-safety-patterns - Context separation and attribution
• llm-evaluation - Quality assessment and hallucination detection
• input-validation - Request sanitization patterns
• owasp-top-10 - Web security fundamentals

Capability Details

nemo-guardrails

Keywords: NeMo, guardrails, rails, Colang, dialog flow, input rails, output rails Solves:

• Configure NeMo Guardrails for LLM safety
• Implement Colang 2.0 dialog flows
• Create input/output validation rails

guardrails-ai-validators

Keywords: Guardrails AI, validator, PII, toxicity, topic restriction, structured output Solves:

• Use Guardrails AI validators for output validation
• Detect and redact PII from LLM responses
• Restrict LLM to specific topics

factuality-checking

Keywords: fact-check, hallucination, grounding, RAG verification, NLI Solves:

• Verify LLM claims against source documents
• Detect hallucinations in generated content
• Implement grounding checks for RAG

red-teaming

Keywords: red team, adversarial, jailbreak, GOAT, prompt injection, DeepTeam Solves:

• Run adversarial testing on LLM systems
• Detect jailbreaking vulnerabilities
• Test prompt injection resistance

owasp-llm-compliance

Keywords: OWASP LLM, LLM security, LLM vulnerabilities, LLM Top 10 Solves:

• Implement OWASP Top 10 for LLMs mitigations
• Audit LLM systems for security compliance
• Design secure LLM architectures