Root Cause Analysis Report

Brief API Login Failures Due to a Security Policy Misconfiguration

1. Executive Summary

On September 11, 2026, a change to one of our network security policies was deployed with a configuration error. For approximately 6 minutes, this caused login requests to be incorrectly blocked, preventing some users from logging in.

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The issue was detected automatically by our monitoring systems. The problematic change was fully reverted within 5 minutes of detection, restoring normal login functionality.

2. Impact

• For approximately 6 minutes (12:30–12:36 PM CT on September 11, 2026), login requests matching certain URL paths were incorrectly blocked.
• Any user attempting to log in during this window could have been affected
• No other functionality was affected. Users already logged in prior to the window were not impacted.

3. Root Cause

As part of a planned security enhancement, our team implemented a new network security policy intended to block a small number of specific, exact URL paths. During implementation, the rule was configured with an erroneous matching condition instead of the intended exact-match condition.

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As a result, the policy blocked any request whose path began with those values, rather than only the exact paths intended ,  which included legitimate login requests that happened to share that prefix. This caused those login attempts to be rejected during the affected window.

4. Resolution

• The problematic policy change was identified and fully reverted within 5 minutes of the first alert.
• Normal login functionality was confirmed restored immediately following the revert.

5. Risk of Recurrence & Preventive Actions‌

Corrective / Preventive Action Enhanced our QA validation step in the process for this class of security policy change, so the deployed configuration is checked against its intended specification before go-live. Enhanced automated test coverage that specifically validates exact-match versus prefix-match behavior for path-based rules, as an additional safeguard on top of the review process.