Glossary — Security & Compliance
What is an Emergency Shutdown?
1 min read Updated
Immediately ceasing all agent financial operations — freezing wallets, revoking tokens, blocking all transactions. The most extreme safety measure for agent finance.
WHY IT MATTERS
Goes beyond kill switches by actively revoking all outstanding authorizations. Used for systemic threats — compromised key management, policy engine vulnerabilities, coordinated attacks.
Must be: immediate, comprehensive, atomic, and auditable.
Recovery requires manual verification before reactivation — deliberate friction preventing premature restart.
HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS
PolicyLayer supports emergency shutdown — instant freeze of all spending, token revocation, and transaction blocking until operator confirms resolution.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Different from kill switch?
Kill switch blocks new transactions. Emergency shutdown also revokes all scoped tokens, invalidates all sessions, and may trigger automated fund recovery procedures.
How often does this happen?
Rarely — emergency shutdowns are for critical incidents. Most issues are handled by circuit breakers or individual kill switches.
Recovery process?
Manual: verify the threat is resolved, audit all agent states, reissue credentials, and gradually reactivate agents with monitoring.