Incident Response Plan Preview

INCIDENT RESPONSE CLASSIFICATION FRAMEWORK
Organization: [Company Name]
Last Updated: [Date]
Version: 2.0

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INCIDENT SEVERITY LEVELS
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SEVERITY 1 - CRITICAL (Response Time: < 15 minutes)
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Definition: Complete service outage or data breach affecting 
customers or critical business operations.

Examples:
• Production environment completely down
• Confirmed data breach with customer PII exposed
• Ransomware attack on critical systems
• Complete loss of primary data center
• Authentication system failure

Immediate Actions:
1. Activate emergency response team
2. Notify executive leadership
3. Begin incident log documentation
4. Initiate communication protocol
5. Assess impact scope

Required Notifications:
• CTO/CISO: Immediately
• CEO: Within 15 minutes
• Legal Team: Within 30 minutes
• PR/Communications: Within 30 minutes
• Board of Directors: Within 2 hours

SEVERITY 2 - HIGH (Response Time: < 30 minutes)
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Definition: Significant service degradation or security incident 
with potential for escalation.

Examples:
• Multiple service components degraded
• Suspected but unconfirmed data breach
• DDoS attack causing intermittent outages
• Critical vulnerability actively exploited
• Payment processing system errors

Response Team:
• Incident Commander
• Technical Lead
• Security Analyst
• Operations Manager
• Customer Success Lead

SEVERITY 3 - MEDIUM (Response Time: < 2 hours)
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Definition: Limited impact to services or minor security events.

Examples:
• Single service component failure
• Non-critical system compromise
• Suspicious activity detected
• Performance degradation <25%
• Failed security scans

SEVERITY 4 - LOW (Response Time: < 8 hours)
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Definition: Minimal impact requiring standard response.

Examples:
• Non-critical bug reports
• Policy violations
• Minor configuration issues
• Isolated user access issues

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INCIDENT CATEGORIES
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SECURITY INCIDENTS:
□ Data Breach - Unauthorized access to sensitive data
□ Malware - Virus, ransomware, or malicious code
□ Phishing - Social engineering attacks
□ Unauthorized Access - Account compromise
□ Physical Security - Facility or device breach
□ Insider Threat - Malicious internal activity

OPERATIONAL INCIDENTS:
□ Service Outage - System or application down
□ Performance - Degraded response times
□ Data Loss - Corruption or deletion
□ Integration Failure - Third-party service issues
□ Infrastructure - Hardware or network failure
□ Configuration Error - Misconfigurations

COMPLIANCE INCIDENTS:
□ Privacy Violation - GDPR, CCPA breaches
□ Regulatory - Industry-specific violations
□ Policy Breach - Internal policy violations
□ Audit Finding - Critical audit issues