@inproceedings{chang-etal-2026-guardrailagent,
title = "{G}uardrail{A}gent: An Agentic Framework for Jailbreak Defense",
author = "Chang, Tianze and
Chu, Junjie and
Wu, Yixin and
Backes, Michael and
Zhang, Yang",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.70/",
pages = "1412--1428",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Despite undergoing safety training to align with human values, large language models (LLMs) remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks that circumvent built-in safeguards and elicit malicious behaviors given by the adversary. Existing defenses are mostly static and fail to adapt to new or unknown attack strategies, providing limited resilience. To address these, we propose a multi-agent defense framework, GuardrailAgent, that offers adaptive, end-to-end protection. The system autonomously gathers and summarizes attack characteristics into a continuously updated knowledge base that supports both input- and output-side detection. A feedback module integrates misclassified cases for iterative improvement at minimal cost. Tested on over ten representative jailbreaks, the framework achieved a 93.1{\%} input-side detection rate, 93.9{\%} overall detection, and a 94.7{\%} F1 score, while rapidly adapting to unseen attacks. These results demonstrate GuardrailAgent{'}s outstanding capability to maintain LLM safety in the face of evolving jailbreak tactics."
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<abstract>Despite undergoing safety training to align with human values, large language models (LLMs) remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks that circumvent built-in safeguards and elicit malicious behaviors given by the adversary. Existing defenses are mostly static and fail to adapt to new or unknown attack strategies, providing limited resilience. To address these, we propose a multi-agent defense framework, GuardrailAgent, that offers adaptive, end-to-end protection. The system autonomously gathers and summarizes attack characteristics into a continuously updated knowledge base that supports both input- and output-side detection. A feedback module integrates misclassified cases for iterative improvement at minimal cost. Tested on over ten representative jailbreaks, the framework achieved a 93.1% input-side detection rate, 93.9% overall detection, and a 94.7% F1 score, while rapidly adapting to unseen attacks. These results demonstrate GuardrailAgent’s outstanding capability to maintain LLM safety in the face of evolving jailbreak tactics.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T GuardrailAgent: An Agentic Framework for Jailbreak Defense
%A Chang, Tianze
%A Chu, Junjie
%A Wu, Yixin
%A Backes, Michael
%A Zhang, Yang
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F chang-etal-2026-guardrailagent
%X Despite undergoing safety training to align with human values, large language models (LLMs) remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks that circumvent built-in safeguards and elicit malicious behaviors given by the adversary. Existing defenses are mostly static and fail to adapt to new or unknown attack strategies, providing limited resilience. To address these, we propose a multi-agent defense framework, GuardrailAgent, that offers adaptive, end-to-end protection. The system autonomously gathers and summarizes attack characteristics into a continuously updated knowledge base that supports both input- and output-side detection. A feedback module integrates misclassified cases for iterative improvement at minimal cost. Tested on over ten representative jailbreaks, the framework achieved a 93.1% input-side detection rate, 93.9% overall detection, and a 94.7% F1 score, while rapidly adapting to unseen attacks. These results demonstrate GuardrailAgent’s outstanding capability to maintain LLM safety in the face of evolving jailbreak tactics.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.70/
%P 1412-1428
Markdown (Informal)
[GuardrailAgent: An Agentic Framework for Jailbreak Defense](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.70/) (Chang et al., Findings 2026)
ACL