I believe this policy, used only a few times per year, has saved us 8 figures in outage costs over a decade. (More than half of the benefit is from a clear statement and instilled sense of ownership, and only secondarily the defusing/unraveling of people would otherwise wait or insert tangles of “best practice” red tape while the website or a factory was hard down.)
I based it on 14 CFR 91.3 (in intent) which says, in part:
91.3 Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.
(a) The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.
(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.
(I made part c of the law, the reporting requirement, mandatory where it’s only on-demand in the aviation law.)
When we explain the policy to new employees, we often cite the aviation law directly, to help clearly communicate our intent.
Often it boils down to not taking sufficient measures against social engineering. In this case the claim is they used fake usernames - most places I've worked, successfully getting a fake account if you already work there would tend to "only" require a willingness to lie on a form or two ("fake" a contractor) and then request elevated privileges. Very few places I've done work requires sufficient checks or counter-signatures to require additional accomplices or make it harder than that. They do exist, but they're rare.
The state of security most places is quite depressing at times. Then again, most of the time it's enough.
That's completely unnecessary and should not be the case. If you need something pushed quickly, you can get a colleague with review bit and get them to ack for "urgency" reasons after a quick lookover.