Implementation guide
OWASP AISVS v1.01
Model Lifecycle Management & Change Control · Controlled Deployment & Rollback
Roll back the whole model state
Verify that rollback capabilities restore the complete model state.
OWASP AISVS v1.01, requirement 3.3.2
In plain English
A model's behaviour depends on more than its weights. A rollback has to restore everything that shapes it: weights, adapters, tokeniser, system prompt, sampling settings, tool definitions and guardrail configuration. Otherwise you return to a combination nobody tested.
What good looks like
- Everything that affects behaviour is versioned together as one release.
- Rollback restores the whole set to a known good release in a single action.
- A rollback test has confirmed the restored system matches the earlier release.
- Data that changes with the model, such as an embedding index, has a rollback plan too.
How teams usually do it
- A release manifest per version that lists every component and its hash.
- Serving configuration, prompts and guardrail settings kept in version control and deployed as code.
- Keeping the previous release deployed and warm until the new one has proved itself.
Suggested evidence
- The release manifest definition and a recent example.
- Results from a rollback test, showing each component returned to its earlier version.
Common mistakes
- Rolling back the weights and leaving the new system prompt or filter settings in place.
- Rolling back the embedding model without the vector index built from it, so searches return rubbish.
- Prompts edited through an admin screen with no version history.
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Requirement text from the OWASP AI Security Verification Standard, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. This guidance is shared under the same licence.