Metal Backup

Overview

Metal is used because it can resist fire, water, impact, and aging better than ordinary paper. Products may stamp, engrave, punch, or assemble characters representing mnemonic words, numbers, passphrases, or key shares.

Durability does not protect against theft, photography, incorrect transcription, corrosion in unsuitable materials, or destruction beyond the product’s rating. Recording only seed words may also omit a required passphrase, derivation context, or share order. Some designs reveal partial information when inspected.

Users should choose a tested material and method, verify every character, store copies in appropriately separated secure locations, and avoid exposing the record during setup. The backup should be inventoried discreetly and checked periodically. Recovery should be tested without entering production secrets into untrusted devices. Disposal must make the recorded material unrecoverable.

The scope of Metal Backup should identify the protected wallet, key, account, service, or business process; the triggering failure; who may declare the incident; which identity and entitlement evidence is required; and the recovery point and recovery time objectives that govern restoration.

Metal Backup differs from ordinary retry or customer support because it restores authority after a control failure. For example, reinstalling an application is not successful recovery until the correct accounts, networks, balances, policies, and transaction history are reproduced and compromised authority can no longer act.

A controlled Metal Backup process moves through detection, containment, claimant verification, approval, restoration, validation, credential or guardian replacement, reconciliation, and closure. For Metal Backup, emergency access should be time-limited and should not silently weaken the authorization policy used during normal operation.