Break-glass Access
A controlled emergency override that trades prevention for detection — granting immediate access in a crisis, logged and reviewed after the fact instead of pre-approved.
aka: emergency access
Break-glass exists for the moments when the normal request-and-approve flow would cost more than it protects — a life-threatening emergency, a system outage during an active incident. The trade is deliberate: access is instant, but every use is logged, and someone reviews it afterward to confirm it was legitimate.