Break Glass

Verb Phrase · Slang & Abbreviations

Definitions

  1. To use an emergency-only override, credential, or procedure when normal controls are too slow for the current incident. In security and ops culture, break glass implies urgency and should leave a clear audit trail.

    In plain English: To use an emergency override or access path in a critical situation.

    Example: "They had to break glass for production access because the identity provider outage had locked the entire incident team out of the normal escalation path."

Related Terms