Guardrails & Safety

Exogram vs Legacy LLM Firewalls

Scanning text is not the same as validating logic.

What Legacy LLM Firewalls Does

  • Legacy LLM Firewalls sit between the user and the model, scanning inputs for prompt injection and outputs for toxic content or PII.
  • They rely on regex, heuristic scanning, and secondary "judge" LLMs to classify text safety.
  • They do not understand the underlying application state or the business logic of an API call.
  • A completely benign-looking prompt can generate a structurally valid but contextually catastrophic database mutation.

What Exogram Does

  • Exogram sits between the AI Agent and your Production APIs as an Execution Governance layer.
  • Instead of scanning text for toxicity, Exogram evaluates the JSON tool payload against live graph state and Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC).
  • If an agent tries to execute `delete_user(id=5)`, Exogram checks the database in 0.07ms to see if `user_5` is protected. A text firewall cannot do this.
  • Provides deep semantic validation of intent, not just surface-level text filtering.

Key Differences

DimensionLegacy LLM FirewallsExogram
Protection SurfaceInputs and Outputs (Text)Actions and Tool Calls (JSON/State)
Decision LogicRegex / LLM JudgesDeterministic State Evaluation
State AwarenessStatelessStateful (Graph Database)

The Verdict

Use an LLM Firewall to stop users from saying bad things to your bot. Use Exogram Execution Governance to stop your bot from doing bad things to your database.

Is Legacy LLM Firewalls vulnerable to execution drift?

Run a static analysis on your LLM pipeline below.

STATIC ANALYSIS

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Exogram replace my WAF?

No. Your WAF protects your network from DDoS and SQL injection. Exogram protects your internal APIs from your own AI agents.