Dashboard guide

Emergency override

The signing service changes at most a part of your hosts per hour and per day (the pace limit). That limit protects you: a mistake, a stolen admin session or even a misused SEK Systems server cannot reach your whole fleet at once. In a real emergency, for example a vulnerability that is exploited right now, you may need more hosts tonight than the limit allows. The emergency override lifts the limit for a few hosts and a short time, and only with two people.

#Who can do it

• Two different people, each an owner or admin of the environment (a SEK Systems platform admin who is a member of your environment counts as one of them).
• Both must be on the approver list and sign with their own security key or passkey, with a PIN or biometrics. When your environment requires hardware keys for approvals, only hardware keys count.
• The person who asks cannot give both signatures.

The signing service checks both signatures itself, against its own approver list. The SEK Systems server alone cannot open an override.

#How to use it

1. Open a plan that waits for the pace limit. It shows Waiting for the signing budget and the button Emergency override….
2. Read the explanation of the risk, then choose:
   • which hosts: the hosts of this plan, the hosts of every waiting plan, or all agents of the environment;
   • how many extra hosts at most;
   • how long it is valid: 4 hours by default, at most 24 hours;
   • a reason of at least 20 characters.
3. Click Request and sign with your key… and confirm with your security key.
4. A second owner or admin gets a notification and sees a banner at the top of the console. They click Sign with your key…. The request expires when nobody signs within the hour.
5. As soon as the second signature is in, the override is active. Waiting plans continue by themselves within about 15 seconds.

While it is active, a red banner on every page shows the hosts, how many extra hosts were used, the end time, who signed and the reason. Revoke now ends it with one click; no second signature is needed for that.

#What does not change

• The kill switch still stops everything.
• Every plan still needs its own approval by a second person.
• Only the allowed actions are signed, and the local policy on each host still decides.
• The limit on sudden growth of the number of agents stays.

#Limits and visibility

• One override at a time per environment, and at most 3 per 7 days. Beyond that, SEK Systems support completes it with a separate platform procedure after both of you have signed, and that is recorded as well.
• Every owner and admin of the environment and the SEK Systems platform admins get a notification when an override is requested, becomes active, is used and is revoked. These notifications go to every notification channel of the environment, whatever the notification rules say.
• The audit log records the request, both signatures, the activation, every use (which plan, how many hosts) and the end.