Override authority is the explicit power for a human operator to interrupt, stop, or deactivate a system, even when that system is running automatically. In security engineering, it is a control boundary: software may recommend or act, but a person must still be able to cancel, suspend, or shut it down.
This matters because automated systems can fail, be misconfigured, or be manipulated by an attacker. Good override authority appears in incident response tools, industrial control systems, cloud automation, and endpoint defenses as kill switches, manual approvals, emergency stop functions, and safe-mode fallbacks. Defenders use it to contain malware, isolate compromised hosts, or halt dangerous processes. Attackers may try to disable these controls, hide them, or race past them so the system executes before a human can intervene. Clear override authority reduces the risk of accidental damage and helps keep high-impact automation under human supervision.