Key recovery material

Name: Key recovery material
Creator: TestPattern Community
License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Identifies key recovery material patterns in security and access control contexts. Detects potential exposure of sensitive security information in Australian systems.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: structural regex with domain-specific anchors and constrained context replaces phrase-only marker.
Detection quality: Mixed
Jurisdictions: au
Regulations: Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), SOCI Act 2018 (Cth), TIA Act 1979 (Cth)
Frameworks: CIS Controls, DISP, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS, SOC 2
Data categories: credentials, security
Scope: wide
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:key\s+recovery|recovery\s+key|escrow\s+key|break-glass)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

key recovery, recovery key, escrow key, break-glass, hsm, kms

Proximity: 240 characters

Should match

Break-glass recovery key escrow procedure for HSM cluster — Recovery material phrase with security context
Key recovery request approved for KMS tenant — Key recovery anchor phrase
Escrow key custodian rotated the HSM break-glass credential — Escrow key and break-glass anchors in custodian context

Should not match

General key performance indicators for project recovery timeline — Unrelated use of key/recovery words
Generic policy prose without key escrow context — No structural security anchors

Known false positives

Authentication-related terminology in software documentation, security training materials, or system architecture descriptions without actual credentials. Mitigation: Require proximity to credential-specific patterns (API keys, connection strings, tokens) rather than general security terminology.
Code snippets and configuration examples containing credential-related keywords or placeholder values in developer documentation. Mitigation: Check for common placeholder patterns (example.com, localhost, 0000) and documentation file types to reduce false positives from technical writing.

References

https://www.cyber.gov.au/resources-business-and-government/essential-cyber-security/ism
https://www.cyber.gov.au/resources-business-and-government/essential-cyber-security/essential-eight
https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles-guidelines/chapter-11-app-11-security-of-personal-information