Risk Engine Timeouts Causing Maximum Risk Score

Products

• Symantec Identity Security Platform - IDSP (formerly VIP Authentication Hub)

Issue/Introduction

During authentication flows in the Symantec Identity Security Platform (IDSP) 4.0, the Authentication Manager Service calls the internal iarisk microservice to evaluate a contextual risk score for the authenticating user. When the iarisk service does not respond within the configured timeout window, the platform catches an IARiskException (Error Code 8800014) and applies a safe-fail default risk score of 100 — the highest possible value — for that authentication attempt.

Environments experiencing 15–20 of these errors per hour will see a corresponding number of artificially elevated risk scores in their risk reporting data. 

Cause

The error is a network I/O read timeout on the internal Kubernetes POST request to /iarisk/v1/UserRiskScoreEvaluator.

Resolution

The configuration parameters below do not have universal recommended values. The appropriate setting for each parameter depends on your environment's observed iarisk response latency, authentication call volume, and infrastructure sizing. Establish a performance baseline before making changes, apply adjustments incrementally in a non-production environment, and validate behavior before promoting to production.

Configuration Parameter Reference

Parameter	Platform Default	Tuning Guidance
riskRequestTimeoutMillis	60,000 ms	Set proportional to your environment's observed iarisk response time. A value significantly lower than the default reduces the delay before fallback triggers on a slow or unresponsive service.
minimumNumberOfCalls	1,000	Set to a value reachable within your environment's normal call volume so the circuit breaker can evaluate failure rate. Environments with low authentication throughput need a lower value.
slidingWindowSize	1,000	Should be proportional to minimumNumberOfCalls and your expected call rate. A window too large relative to call volume will delay circuit breaker reaction.
failureRateThreshold	50%	Lowering this makes the circuit breaker more sensitive to partial degradation. Adjust carefully — too low a value can cause the circuit to open on transient blips.
waitDurationInOpenStateMillis	1,000 ms	Set to give the iarisk service enough time to stabilize before the circuit transitions to half-open and resumes probe calls. Too short a value causes premature retry storms.