When it comes to creating the most effective and steadfast incident management process or strategy for a business many elements must be considered – the size of the employee base; the nature of the business; and the variety, severity, and complexity of possible incidents. It may be impossible to prepare for every scenario. However, what leaders can and should do is create a guideline, or a framework, that prepares them and their employees to handle a myriad of incidents – large or small – with efficiency and confidence.
Incident management is often put on the backburner in order to address current, real-time issues. However, as the intent of incident management is to help decision-makers handle these real-time issues smarter, faster, and with less detrimental consequences to business continuity, assets, and organizational reputation. Investing the time in incident management preparedness will be well worth the effort and offers unlimited benefits to stakeholders, and even the organization’s bottom line.
A well thought out incident management plan will help your organization reduce downtime and minimize impact on employee productivity. Instead of floundering in the face of a challenge, teams will know exactly who needs to be called in to assist, how to investigate and record the incident, and how to efficiently resolve it. To help leaders get their incident management protocols in place, here are five incident management best practices to leverage.
Best Practice #1: Invest Time to Establish a Clear Incident Response Plan
First things first, leaders must establish a clear and detailed incident response plan. This is the foundation of effective incident management and will set the stage for a coordinated and efficient response. Essential components of this plan should include:
- Defined roles and responsibilities. This information must make it clear as to which personnel are involved during each stage of the incident and what their responsibilities during and after the incident are.
- Established communication channels. Specifics on the way in which various decision-makers and stakeholders are notified of the incident – via email, text, phone, etc. It is also important to make it clear as to what level of information is shared to each of these parties.
- Clear escalation procedures. A clear, step-by-step guide is essential for minimizing chaos, outlining not only who to notify during an major incident but also who will take charge if the primary decision-maker is unavailable, and identifying additional stakeholders to involve based on the situation.
A great way to ensure that your incident management life cycle is best suited for your organization is to leverage risk intelligence. This data is a sound way to anticipate potential incidents, based on historical information and vetted insight from experts, and will help inform plan development – leading to a strategy that is customized and robust. Understanding what issues have surfaced in the past is invaluable in helping to create solutions and real-time management processes in case similar scenarios unfold in the future.
Best Practice #2: Build a Strong Incident Response Team
As best practice #1 discusses, the individuals or teams brought in to take control of incidents should be identified carefully. They should be dedicated and prepared to be responsible for managing incidents from detection to resolution.
The critical skills and expertise that incident response team members should possess include problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and various levels of technical knowledge (based on the needs and processes of an individual organization. Having a sound understanding of an organization’s technologies, applications, and platforms will be important as is the need to collaborate effectively across departments. Some incidents may affect only one group, but others can impact the entire organization. Knowing leaders across teams and being able to share information widely and effectively is crucial in these cases.
Organizations should invest in their incident response teams by offering regular training sessions and drills that keep them prepared and up-to-date on changes within the organization that might be relevant depending on the issue at play.
Best Practice #3: Prioritize and Classify Incidents Effectively
In addition to communicating critical information to appropriate stakeholders in a time-sensitive manner, one of the most essential duties of the incident report team is incident identification and classification. In the case of multiple simultaneous incidents, it is key to ensure the most critical issues are addressed first, therefore teams need to have a solid understanding of an incident’s potential impact and urgency. This ensures the most critical issues are addressed first, ideally minimizing disruption to the organization, its people, and its processes, and helping to get activities back to normalcy as quickly as possible.
Incidents that will impact the organization most significantly will need to be addressed first. To help teams determine high priority incidents, they can leverage risk intelligence as this will provide a data-driven approach to prioritization. Leveraging risk intelligence will also help teams plan for potential risks and identify challenges that might occur and actively preempt their occurrence.
Another tactic to ensure efficient and accurate incident classification is leverage incident response automation, “the use of rule-driven logic, machine learning (ML), and AI.” Using technology to assist the team can offer several benefits, including streamlining the triage process, making incident classification and reporting more efficient, and adding bandwidth to teams that might be short staffed.
Best Practice #4: Leverage Advanced Analytics for Incident Investigation
After incident management team members assess, communicate, classify, and address the event to mitigate its impact, they should proceed to the investigation phase. This step is critical and involves more than simply recording what happened during the incident.
If done properly, this investigation phase will leverage advanced analytics and uncover helpful data that can help the organization to detect early warning signs of future incidents. The goal during incident investigation is to collect data that not only provides insight as to why this specific incident occurred, but uncover new details, such as undetected patterns, that may indicate underlying issues. Entering the investigation phase with an understanding that it’s not just about recording the known what’s and why’s, but it’s about striving to reveal root causes and unknown contributing factors that led to the incident.
Oftentimes an organization might not have analytical experts on staff. Identifying an expert in this field and bringing them in as a partner can be helpful in incident management and prevention. Risk intelligence companies are built to track and analyze data, and are staffed with analytical experts who understand how to identify trends and can adeptly turn learnings from one event into a strategy that preempts your team before the incident occurs.
Best Practice #5: Dedicate Bandwidth to Conduct Thorough Post-Incident Reviews
Establishing a post-incident review process and writing a report that contains pertinent information will offer long-term benefits to the organization. Key actions to take during post-incident reviews include:
- Creating a detailed timeline. Having specific details regarding the incident in terms of when problems began is key and are core elements to record regardless of the scope or type of event.
- Conducting a root cause analysis. This steps centers around leveraging analytics and intelligence as discussed in best practice #4.
- Interviewing eyewitnesses. At this time the incident management team will want to speak with eyewitnesses in order to gather as much intelligence surrounding the event as possible. Anecdotal details can help add nuance to the data recorded.
- Developing actionable recommendations. Knowing what ignited issues in the past is advantageous as it identifies what to monitor moving forward in order to detect early warning signs of similar incidents and improve future response efforts.
The report should be viewed as a valuable guide for enacting corrective actions and preemptive precautions that will help prevent similar events from escalating, or even occurring, in the future. It is also a great tool to help refine incident response strategies and improve overall incident management capabilities. All lessons learned during the investigation and analysis phase of an incident should be integrated into the organization’s risk intelligence framework to better anticipate and manage future incidents.
Incident Management is Key to Business Success
Organizations that take a holistic approach to incident management are better equipped to handle unplanned events. Incident management aims to increase the likelihood of making sound decisions under pressure. Leaders can do this by employing the five best practices discussed throughout this article, specifically:
Establish a Clear Incident Response Plan to ensure that all managers, team leads, and employees understand the importance of this activity.
Build a Strong Incident Response Team and invest in their training to ensure they are confident in their roles.
Prioritize and Classify Incidents Effectively with the goal of addressing the most time-sensitive and significant issues first.
Leverage Advanced Analytics for Incident Investigation, as risk intelligence can efficiently highlight data that allows the incident response team to identify trends and isolate root causes.
Conduct Thorough Post-Incident Reviews to ensure that the organization is always reviewing pertinent analytics and stays committed to continuous learning.
Investing in a prepared incident management response team is invaluable. Well-prepared teams that understand their roles and steps to take across various scenarios can respond swiftly, mitigate fallout, and prevent further major incidents, protecting employees, assets, reputations, and operations.
Leaders should promote open communication and foster a culture of learning from incidents to continuously improve their incident management workflow. While managing these tasks can be challenging, partnering with risk intelligence experts can be a game-changer. Their technology and expertise allow response teams to focus on analyzing data rather than gathering it, helping identify patterns, root causes, and trends through historical data analysis.
Seerist is an ideal risk intelligence partner, offering AI-driven technology coupled with knowledge and insight long from a network of globally-based experts to help organizations preemptively identify approaching risks and obtain maximum learnings via the collating and review of past data. Seerist also offers robust reporting capabilities, powerful yet user-friendly search functionality, Hot Spots, real-time stability assessments, and so much more. If interested, please contact X to schedule a demo.
