Break glass

Break glass provides TTL-bound emergency role grants at project, workspace, or environment scope. Sessions are logged immutably in the audit trail. This is separate from policy exceptions and compliance waivers.

Where to find it

Surface Route / path Primary use
Break glass page /governance/break-glass View active and historical break glass sessions (Platform Administrators).
Administration → Roles & Access Break Glass tab Create, terminate, and delete sessions; full management UI.
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Break glass is restricted to Platform Administrators. The standalone page shows a read-only session table when you have access; session creation and termination are managed from Roles & Access.

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What break glass does

During an incident, a Platform Administrator can grant a temporary role to a user, team, or synced group at a scoped resource so they can perform emergency work without a permanent role change.

  • Each session has a time-to-live (TTL) — 15 minutes to 24 hours.
  • An incident number and justification are required when activating.
  • Sessions expire automatically when TTL elapses.
  • All actions are written to Administration → Audit Logs.

Session table columns

On /governance/break-glass and the Roles & Access tab, sessions show:

Column Meaning
Scope Project, workspace, or environment.
Resource Scoped resource identifier.
Grant User email (or principal) receiving the temporary role.
Role Role granted for the session.
Incident Incident or ticket reference number.
Started / Expires Session window.
Remaining Minutes left before automatic expiry.
Assigned by Administrator who activated the session.
Status ACTIVE or expired/terminated state.

Typical workflow

  1. Confirm the incident requires temporary elevated access (not a permanent role change).
  2. Open Administration → Roles & Access → Break Glass.
  3. Select scope (project, workspace, or environment), target user/team/group, role, TTL, incident number, and justification.
  4. Activate the session; the grantee receives temporary permissions until expiry.
  5. Monitor active sessions on the Break Glass tab
  6. Terminate early when the incident is resolved, or let TTL expire.
  7. Review audit logs for the full session history.

Break glass vs other waivers

Mechanism What it grants Where
Break glass Temporary role at project/workspace/environment scope Roles & Access → Break Glass
Policy exceptions Time-bound waiver for an enforcing policy violation Governance Dashboard → Exceptions
Compliance waivers Approval to mark a framework control as waived Compliance → Exceptions
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Audit and governance

Break glass activation, termination, and expiry events appear in Administration → Audit Logs. Viewing audit logs requires audit:read.

Active break glass session counts may also surface as alerts on the Roles & Access hub when sessions are in progress.

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For day-to-day policy posture, use the Governance Dashboard . Break glass is for audited emergency access only — not a substitute for fixing policy violations.