Layer Retrofit — Securing a Production RAG Pipeline

Overview

A mid-sized fintech company had a production RAG pipeline processing thousands of customer queries daily. The system was built for speed, not security — with no input validation, no retrieval sandboxing, and no output filtering. Our engagement focused on retrofitting comprehensive security controls without disrupting the live system.

Approach

• Conducted a full threat assessment of the existing RAG pipeline architecture
• Identified 12 critical attack surfaces including prompt injection vectors and retrieval poisoning risks
• Designed and implemented a modular security overlay using the Layer Retrofit framework
• Deployed input sanitization, retrieval boundary enforcement, and output validation chains
• Established continuous monitoring dashboards for runtime threat detection

Tools & Technologies

Measurable Outcomes

• Reduced prompt injection success rate from 34% to under 2%
• Zero production downtime during the entire retrofit process
• Achieved full OWASP LLM Top 10 compliance within 6 weeks
• Retrieval poisoning attempts detected and blocked in real-time