It's Monday, 9 am. You're off to work and you think of withdrawing some cash before you check in. You grab a good coffee from your favourite barista, and you're off to the ATM. You're standing in front of the ATM machine, swiping your card, hoping to get some cash. The cash doesn't seem to get out of the machine; you're tensed. Soon you will hear the news of a major outage at the bank.
It could be a glitch, network issue, or worse, a cyberattack. Monday just got worse for you and a lot of people in need of cash. Not to forget, employers and employees of the bank are in distress too. They're all crying out loud as you are, trying to figure out what went wrong and how they can fix what they probably didn't break.
However, the IT teams of the bank show up with incident management to play the cops and diagnose the issue, and resolve them as soon as they can, and bring the world back to normal again. Speaking of incident management, it plays a great cop in not just preventing an incident at the bank, but also a lot more.
You have reached work after the incident has been resolved, but you're late. You tell your boss, 'There was a problem at the bank'. Your boss, a tech enthusiast, went to an ATM of the same bank, and yes, his morning was disrupted just like yours. They say, 'There was an incident, incident.', roll their eyes, and are off to their desk. They do sound a bit obnoxious, given that you're both referring to the same thing. But, your boss is right. An incident and problem are two different terms, and before delving into incident management, here's more context to how an incident and problem are different:
| Aspect | Incident | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in quality of service | The cause or a potential cause of one or more incidents |
| Focus | Immediate resolution of service interruptions | Identifying and eliminating causes of incident |
| Goal | To restore normal service operation/function as soon as possible | To prevent incidents from occurring or recurring |
| Approach | Reactive approach- Responding to incidents as they occur | Proactive approach- analyzes incidents to identify underlying issues |
| Timeframe | Short-term- addresses immediate issues | Long-term- focuses on systemic improvements |
| Resolution | Provides temporary fixes or workarounds | Long-term; focuses on systemic improvements |
| Examples | A customer reports that they are unable to withdraw money from a specific ATM. The ATM displays an error message instead of dispensing cash. | The incident logs are reviewed and the bank notices that this particular ATM runs out of cash often, resulting in frequent occurrence of these incidents. |
Incident management is the process of identifying, assessing, responding to, and resolving incidents that disrupt normal operations or pose risks to an organization. It aims to restore services as soon as possible while minimizing the impact on the organization's business operations. If we were to zoom out on the primary objective, it is to ensure that incidents are tracked throughout their lifecycle and prevent the same from occurring in the future- be it the same kind or different.
The process primarily involves the job of a detective- detecting incidents such as system outages, security breaches, or hardware failures, and then categorizing them based on severity and urgency after which the investigation, resolution, and reporting are done. We will break down the process soon.
The incident at the bank is an example of a downtime, and we saw that having an incident management system can mitigate and prevent it and other such incidents. The system does not just detect, diagnose, and defuse the downtime distress An in-depth yet rapid process of assessment and reporting is done as the identification and resolution are done. This is to mitigate the impact of incidents on the organization's operations and keep future occurrences at bay.
With this process, organizations can also avoid financial losses with extended downtime, such as disaster recovery costs, customer loss, legal liabilities, etc. Additionally, minimizing downtime aids in maintaining productivity and overall business continuity. No one wants to be interrupted, do they?
Let's take a look at the bank incident again. We know that incident management rapidly resolves the incident and all the operations get back to normal. The sooner the incident is mitigated, the sooner stakeholders and customers can get back to their activities, and this shows the organization's commitment to quality service. In addition to the pace of resolution, being able to consistently resolve issues leads to more reliable services and results in a better overall user experience.
Furthermore, the analysis and reporting of incidents aids in identifying recurring issues, which further helps in implementing appropriate preventive measures, owing to long-term improvements in the quality of service.
Incident management provides a structured and systematic approach to handling service disruptions and issues. Clear processes are established to identify, categorize, and prioritize incidents and ensure that critical issues are addressed immediately while optimizing resource utilization.
For instance, the bank's trading platform slows down during peak market hours, and we know that this is a big red flag. Trading losses, missed and delayed trades, and the list goes on. Now, an incident response team is assembled and they identify this and flag this as a high priority incident, soon after which they assess, analyze, and resolve the incident as quickly as possible.
With faster incident resolution, downtime and costs relevant to the same are minimized, hence improving the organization's operational efficiency. By facilitating faster incident resolution, it minimizes downtime and its associated costs, directly improving operational efficiency.
Legal and industry standards such as PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, etc mandate incident response and reporting procedures to ensure immediate detection and resolution of incidents. Not to mention, it also focuses on prevention of future occurrences of the same.
With effective incident management in place, organizations can show their commitment towards maintaining legal and ethical standards and towards protecting data and maintaining operational integrity. The compliance and its demonstration also help build trust with customers, stakeholders, and regulatory bodies.
The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework outlines a structured approach to incident management, which typically includes these steps:
The very first step in incident management is identifying and logging the incident. This can occur through various channels:
When an incident is identified, it should be logged with important information such as:
Once logged, the incident is to be categorized which involves assigning the incident to a logical category and subcategory, aiding in:
After categorization, incidents must be prioritized which is based on two main factors:
Priorities are typically set as follows:
Prioritization helps ensure that the most critical issues are addressed first and that service level agreements (SLAs) are met.
Now that the incident has been prioritized, it is to be responded to, which involves the following sub-steps:
Throughout this process, it's crucial to keep affected users and relevant stakeholders informed about the incident status and expected resolution time.
The final step is incident closure. This involves:
After closure, the incidents are continuously analyzed to identify trends and patterns.This can help identify recurring issues and implement measures to prevent future occurrences of similar incidents. To elaborate, the continuous analysis enables real-time threat detection, risk management, and improved incident response. You will be provided with up-to-date insights and facilitate ongoing improvement of security processes for your organization.
