Human review is useful only when the reviewer can understand and challenge the proposed action. A button labelled approve does not establish informed oversight. For a high-impact authentication recommendation, present the evidence, exact change, affected mail flows, uncertainty and recovery plan together, then give the reviewer time and authority to stop it.
Identify what makes the decision consequential
Examples include moving a domain to a stricter DMARC policy, removing a widely used SPF authorization or retiring a DKIM selector. The risk depends on the organisation's actual senders and traffic, not just the size of the DNS diff. A small record change can interrupt a critical low-volume service.
RFC 9989 describes DMARC policy and receiver behavior. A requested policy is not a delivery guarantee or a universal command to every receiver. The review should distinguish the policy requested by the domain owner from the outcomes observed at particular receiving systems.
Prepare a reviewable packet
Include current configuration, proposed configuration, business purpose, evidence window, known senders, unresolved sources and test coverage. State which identities passed aligned authentication and which assumptions require business confirmation. Provide the original evidence references, not only the AI summary. Show the approval target in human-readable form alongside its machine binding.
Assign the business owner to confirm continuity needs, the mail administrator to validate the technical change and the security owner to assess risk and authorization. A single person may hold multiple roles in a small organisation, but the responsibilities should remain explicit. Do not claim independent review when the same agent generated and approved the recommendation.
Demonstrate a hold rather than a rubber stamp
Suppose a proposed policy tightening has an unresolved payroll sender and no recovery owner. The recommended review disposition is hold, with those two gaps assigned to accountable people. If the missing fields are later supplied, the packet becomes ready for substantive human review, not automatically approved or safe to publish. These are hypothetical decisions, not executed gate results or real approval records.
Completeness does not establish that the underlying evidence is true. The reviewer must inspect the actual sender, tests and recovery feasibility. OWASP Excessive Agency recommends human approval for high-impact actions and authorization enforcement outside the LLM’s own judgment; this packet design is a proposed application, not a prescribed approval protocol.
Bind and time-limit the decision
Record the authenticated reviewer, decision, exact scope, conditions and expiry. A conditional approval such as after payroll testing is not current permission to execute before that test. If the proposal, target or relevant evidence changes, return for review. Check the baseline again immediately before implementation.
Keep disagreement visible. A business owner may identify a sender absent from the report set; the right outcome is further investigation rather than forcing a yes or no on incomplete information. Review queues should distinguish urgent security containment from planned policy rollout, since they have different continuity and escalation needs.
Resolve a conditional approval before execution
Suppose the reviewer says the specific proposal may proceed only after a payroll test passes. A new summary saying ready does not satisfy that condition by itself. Retrieve the dated authorized test evidence, confirm it exercises the intended production route and check that the target and baseline still match the reviewed proposal. A different customer account or later material change must return to the appropriate review.
This hypothetical condition illustrates why approval, readiness and verification are separate. It supplies no machine digest, accepted simulated response or archived test output, and it asserts no live DNS change.
Verify after the decision
An approval permits the defined action; it does not prove the action succeeded. Verify configuration and authorized mail tests, record residual uncertainty and observe scheduled senders over their relevant operating cycle. NIST AI RMF frames governance and management as ongoing activities. Apply that principle by keeping recovery and incident ownership active after the approval screen closes.