A mechanism is provided for protecting storage fabrics from an errant device causing a single point of failure. The mechanism identities a source of the out-of-context traffic, isolates the TAG to prevent further catastrophe, and ensures that device isolation control operations are processed timely allowing device isolation and removing the source of the issue. Should device isolation not solve the issue, the mechanism allows the host to use a binary search method to isolate the device that may be hiding its true identity and sourcing possibly malicious traffic.