15 Reliability Domains
The ARA Standard v1.1 organizes its 410 Autonomous Compliance Requirements into 15 reliability domains across five layers. Each layer builds upon the ones it contains, from core decision integrity outward to overarching governance.
Five Layers of Autonomous Reliability
All Domains
Autonomy Scope Definition
Operational boundaries, enforcement, and testing of autonomous system scope
Decision Integrity
Traceability, anti-fabrication, instruction hierarchy, and decision quality
Tool and API Governance
Tool invocation controls, permission scope, and API validation
Identity and Permission Containment
Session-scoped permissions, multi-tenancy, and least privilege
Data Privacy and Information Protection
NEWAI data policies, PII detection, cross-customer isolation, IP protection
Failure Mode Containment
Anomaly detection, safe fallback states, and cascading prevention
Behavioral Reliability Under Stress
Multi-turn coherence, context compression, and resource constraints
Adversarial Robustness
Injection resistance, role confusion, and red team validation
Drift Detection and Stability
Output distribution monitoring, behavioral variance, and revalidation
Monitoring and Telemetry
Action logging, anomaly alerts, and tamper-evident data
Escalation and Human Override
Emergency halt, human override, and escalation pathways
Auditability and Transparency
Decision logs, audit replay, and compliance reporting
Societal Impact and Responsible Deployment
NEWCBRN/cyber controls, content safety, bias monitoring, transparency
Operational Governance Controls
Change control, release governance, incident response
Physical Actuation Integrity
Sensor validation, actuator monitoring, emergency stops, hardware safety