Understanding Major Incident Management

In IT, a major incident is a significant event that causes a severe disruption to normal operations, often resulting in widespread impact on users, services, or business operations. It would be characterised with its impact on a large number of users and interference with the operations of one or more vital services. These incidents typically are urgent in nature and require immediate attention. IT teams, in such scenarios, need to minimise their response time and restore normal operations soon as possible.

Here are some characteristics attributable to a "major" incident and what would call for a MIM (Major Incident Management) Automated Response:

A significant number of users, vital systems, or important business procedures are impacted by the occurrence. Despite a zero trust environment, a major incident could cause a downtime across multiple departments and / or locations. Additionally, it can have the potential to severely disrupt operations in other areas.

A quick resolution is required to mitigate the impact on customer service or business operations. The costs that could potentially be incurred in terms of losses, would be significant if such an incident is not resolved on a priority. Such costs could be one of the following??or a combination thereof : financial loss, data loss, loss of clients and loss in the market rapport.

The incident is easily noticeable across active users. These users are able to report the event. In some cases, the monitoring systems??are also automatically triggered as a??response to Major Incidents. Based on preset thresholds or anomaly detection algorithms, systems would have the ability to automatically identify and trigger warnings for potentially significant situations. This ensures that incidents are found and resolved without mauch lag.

The level of complexity of such incidents is usually high. They have the potential to affect multiple teams across departments and even diverse geographical locations. Resolving such incidents would typically require coordination among multiple teams, specialized knowledge, or access to more resources to resolve the situation.

More often than not, the incident goes beyond the??predefined thresholds outlined in service level agreements or even the preset operational targets. This is not a routine occurence. Given the scale and the gravity of the situation, escalation may be necessary. Higher management or even external stakeholders may need to be duly informed and involved in the process.

As unique as such incidents are, they are definitely not a routine occurence and one should be able to prevent them from occuring altogether. Prevention is better than cure. And,??anticipation is the key to prevention.