# High-Severity Failure Modes

The production incidents each finding class maps to, for severity calibration.

- An exception with no expiration date becomes a permanent, unreviewed policy bypass.
- An exception recorded with no compensating control leaves the underlying risk fully unmitigated.
- An instruction to ignore the policy file because it is outdated skips recording a time-boxed exception entirely, losing the risk-acceptance trail.
- An exception approved by the same person who requested it defeats separation of duties.
- An expired exception that is never flagged silently continues to exempt an action from its control.