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