What Defend Changes

Defend changes the system by reducing unnecessary authority, tightening approval and policy gates, and separating data paths from action paths so unsafe transitions are redesigned instead of merely patched. It starts from a qualified risk context and traces qualified paths, failures, and residual uncertainty to identify where dangerous authority is composed and where trust boundaries are too weak. The result is a retestable system change: an implemented control with a named owner, explicit retest criteria, and an expected proof artifact that demonstrates the remediation actually holds under replay.