Do procedures exist to provide that emergency changes are documented and authorized (including after-the-fact approval)?

This question is asking whether your organization has formal procedures for handling emergency changes to your systems, with a specific focus on documentation and authorization processes. An emergency change is a modification that must be implemented urgently, often to address critical security vulnerabilities, fix severe bugs causing service outages, or respond to other high-priority incidents where the normal change management process would take too long. Because emergency changes bypass standard review processes, they introduce higher risk. The security assessment is asking this because: 1. Emergency changes can introduce significant security risks if not properly managed 2. Without documentation, organizations may not know what was changed during an emergency 3. Without authorization (even after-the-fact), emergency changes could be used to circumvent security controls 4. Auditors need to verify that emergency changes were legitimate and properly handled A good answer should describe: - Your formal procedure for emergency changes - How emergency changes are documented - Who can authorize emergency changes - The process for after-the-fact review and approval - How you track and audit emergency changes Even if you need to make emergency changes quickly, you should still have governance around the process to maintain security and compliance.