"Would Our Controls Have Caught This?"
Answered without touching production. Shadow Mode validates detection logic and policy behavior in parallel, using clean sandbox signals or synthetic equivalents—zero production risk.
What Shadow Mode is (and isn't)
✅ Shadow Mode Does
- Tests control logic with sandbox-only inputs (synthetic applicants, simulated transactions, mock graph data)
- Compares expected vs. observed decision outcomes between control versions
- Validates integration assumptions (does the new signal feed correctly; does the rule engine respond as designed?)
- Estimates control lift (what's the incremental fraud-catch improvement from a new detector?)
- Runs parallel evaluations for new policies or agent constraints before production deployment
❌ Shadow Mode Does Not
- Not a production connector (no live customer data ingestion)
- No live PII (synthetic applicants only)
- No direct production dependency (isolated evaluation engine)
Use Cases
Signal Source Validation
New IDV provider or behavioral analytics vendor? Validate that signals integrate correctly and improve detection before cutover.
Model Performance Estimation
Retrain your fraud model on new feature sets? Shadow-run against historical scenarios to estimate lift before production deployment.
Policy Hardening
Draft new approval-gate rules or agent policy constraints? Shadow-test against pack scenarios to confirm they tighten controls without introducing false positives.
A/B Testing at Scale
Compare two rule configurations or model versions in parallel; measure which drives better resilience/efficiency trade-off.