Technological / System Depth

When systems can’t prove permission and behavior, risk becomes invisible.

At this depth, failures hide in architectures: permissions, logging, dependencies, and the absence of testable constraints.

---

What fails here

• Provable permission boundaries
• Auditability and tamper-evidence
• Containment and fail-safe behavior

---

What it looks like

• No reliable logs for “who did what”
• Permissions are broad and persistent
• Dependencies are opaque and brittle
• Behavior can’t be tested under stress

---

Why it happens (failure mechanism)

Technology scales capability faster than governance can define and enforce permission. Without provable constraints, systems drift until failure reveals the truth.

---

Minimum viable safeguards

Verification

• Tamper-evident logs where it matters
• Explicit permissions with least privilege
• Test harnesses for high-risk behavior claims

Counterweights

• Separation of deploy and approve for sensitive changes
• Independent security / risk review with stop authority
• Vendor exit plans and multi-dependency resilience

Correction Loops

• Continuous monitoring with thresholds
• Routine incident response drills
• Patch and permission review cadence (not ad hoc)

---

Proof the safeguards are working

• You can reconstruct incidents from logs
• Permissions are time-bounded and reviewed
• Tests reliably detect unsafe behavior
• Failover drills work in reality

---

Where it propagates next

Tech drift becomes organizational risk, then institutional trust loss when failures externalize.

---

Explore by patterns

Verification Gap • Dependency Trap • Exception Drift

---

---