Incident Response Procedures

Objective

Guide structured incident response for IT support issues with proper escalation and communication.

Incident Severity Levels

Critical (P1)

• Production system down
• Security breach in progress
• Data loss occurring
• Multiple customers affected

Response: Immediate, all-hands SLA: 1 hour resolution or escalation

High (P2)

• Major feature broken
• Significant performance degradation
• Customer-facing issues
• Workaround not available

Response: Priority handling SLA: 4 hours resolution

Medium (P3)

• Non-critical feature broken
• Performance issues with workaround
• Internal tools affected

Response: Normal queue SLA: 24 hours resolution

Low (P4)

• Minor issues
• Enhancement requests
• Questions

Response: Best effort SLA: 72 hours response

Response Workflow

1. Triage (First 5 minutes)

• Acknowledge receipt
• Classify severity
• Assign to appropriate specialist
• Notify stakeholders if P1/P2

2. Investigation (Severity-dependent)

• Gather initial information
• Reproduce if possible
• Identify impacted systems
• Document timeline

3. Resolution

• Implement fix or workaround
• Test in safe environment
• Deploy with change control
• Verify resolution

4. Post-Incident

• Document root cause
• Update knowledge base
• Schedule post-mortem (P1/P2)
• Implement prevention measures

Communication Templates

Initial Response

Incident #{ID} acknowledged.
Severity: {LEVEL}
Assigned to: {SPECIALIST}
ETA for update: {TIME}

Status Update

Incident #{ID} Update
Status: {Investigating/In Progress/Resolved}
Current action: {DESCRIPTION}
Next update: {TIME}

Resolution

Incident #{ID} Resolved
Root cause: {DESCRIPTION}
Resolution: {DESCRIPTION}
Prevention: {RECOMMENDATIONS}

Escalation Matrix

Knowledge Base Integration

After resolution:

1. Search for existing KB article
2. Update if found, create if not
3. Tag with relevant keywords
4. Link to incident ticket