🧠 RAG Traversal Templates

(Query-Safe Paths)

Below is a formal set of RAG traversal templates designed to be query-safe, non-hallucinatory, and ontology-governed, explicitly aligned with:

• Core Ontology v1.0
• Asset Extension v1.0 (implemented)
• Incident Extension (planned)
• Risk Extension (planned)
• ThreatActor Extension (planned)

These templates are not examples — they are approved traversal contracts that an LLM (or agent) is allowed to follow.

Implementation rule: templates requiring planned extensions MUST be treated as unavailable until the corresponding extension OWL and shapes are present.

0. Why Traversal Templates Exist (Non-Negotiable)

RAG systems must not “reason freely” over graphs They must follow pre-approved paths to avoid:

• invented causality
• probabilistic leakage
• attribution hallucination
• business logic pollution

A Traversal Template defines:

• allowed start nodes
• allowed edge sequence
• allowed end nodes
• forbidden shortcuts

1. Core Traversal Invariants (Global Rules)

These apply to all templates:

1. ❌ Never skip layers (e.g. CVE → Technique directly)
2. ❌ Never cross extensions unless explicitly allowed
3. ✅ Traverse from extension nodes into Core only through explicitly declared mapping edges
4. ❌ Never infer “used”, “caused”, or “exploited” unless edge exists
5. ✅ Always terminate on authoritative Core nodes for explanations

2. Core + Asset Baseline Traversal Templates

T-CORE-01 — Vulnerability → Defensive Options

Question answered

“How can this vulnerability be mitigated or detected?”

Traversal

Vulnerability
 → Weakness
 → AttackPattern
 → Technique
 → (DefensiveTechnique | DetectionAnalytic | DeceptionTechnique)

Why safe

• Follows the causal backbone
• No incident or attribution inference

T-CORE-02 — Asset Exposure Analysis

Question answered

“What attack techniques are relevant to this asset?”

Traversal

Asset
 → PlatformConfiguration
 → Vulnerability
 → Weakness
 → AttackPattern
 → Technique

Forbidden

• ❌ Asset → Technique (direct)

T-CORE-03 — Technique Context

Question answered

“What is this technique, and how is it usually handled?”

Traversal

Technique
 → Tactic
 → DefensiveTechnique
 → DetectionAnalytic
 → DeceptionTechnique

3. Incident Extension Traversal Templates

Status: planned (activate only when Incident extension artifacts are available).

T-INC-01 — Incident → What Happened

Question answered

“What techniques were observed in this incident?”

Traversal

Incident
 → ObservedTechnique
 → Technique

Rule

• ObservedTechnique is mandatory (no abstraction jumps)

4. ThreatActor Extension Traversal Templates

Status: planned (activate only when ThreatActor extension artifacts are available).

T-TA-01 — Attribution Reasoning

Question answered

“Who might be responsible for this incident?”

Traversal

Incident
 → AttributionClaim
 → ThreatActor

Hard rule

• ❌ Incident → ThreatActor (direct) is illegal

5. Risk Extension Traversal Templates

Status: planned (activate only when Risk extension artifacts are available).

T-RISK-01 — Risk Prioritization

Question answered

“Which vulnerabilities should we fix first?”

Traversal

Asset
 → Vulnerability
 → RiskScenario
 → RiskScore

Rule

• CVSS is referenced, never overridden

6. Cross-Extension (Explicitly Allowed) Templates

Status: planned (requires Incident + Risk extensions).

T-X-01 — Incident → Risk Escalation

Question answered

“How does this incident affect our risk posture?”

Traversal

Incident
 → ObservedTechnique
 → Technique
 → RiskScenario
 → RiskScore

7. Forbidden Traversals (Global Blacklist)

These must be hard-blocked in RAG:

❌ CVE → ThreatActor ❌ Incident → Vulnerability ❌ ThreatActor → Weakness ❌ RiskScore → Technique ❌ Detection → ThreatActor ❌ Incident → Decision

If a user asks a question that requires one of these paths → the system must answer with uncertainty.

8. How to Enforce This in Practice

Option A — Static Path Registry

• Encode templates as allowed edge sequences
• Reject queries outside registry

Option B — Query Planner + Validator

1. LLM proposes traversal
2. Validator checks against template list
3. Only then execute graph query

Option C — Prompt-Bound RAG

Inject templates directly into system prompt:

“You may only answer by following one of the approved traversal templates…”