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Event Categorization Guide

PostedNovember 11, 2024
UpdatedNovember 12, 2024
ByKevin McCaffrey

Document Date: November 7, 2024
Author: Kevin McCaffrey

Purpose

This guide provides criteria for assessing the business impact of operational events and assigning appropriate priority levels to ensure efficient resource allocation and response. The aim is to address critical issues first, protecting safety, financial interests, and the company’s reputation.

Categorization Framework

Operational events are classified and prioritized based on their potential impact on the business. This framework ensures clarity and consistency across all teams when responding to events.

1. Assessment Criteria

When assessing operational events, consider the following impact factors:

  • Loss of Life or Injury: Events threatening the safety of individuals should be addressed immediately. Examples: security breaches involving physical risks, equipment malfunctions impacting safety, or critical health-related incidents.
  • Financial Loss: Assess the potential financial repercussions. High-priority events could include major outages halting transactions, breaches exposing sensitive data, or failures impacting revenue-generating systems.
  • Reputation or Trust: Events likely to harm the company’s reputation or erode customer trust must be prioritized. Scenarios include significant data breaches, prolonged service disruptions, or events causing widespread customer dissatisfaction.

2. Priority Levels

Based on the assessment, events are categorized into three priority levels:

  • Critical (High Impact): Events that directly affect safety, financial stability, or brand reputation. Requires immediate response and resolution.
    • Examples: Data breaches exposing confidential information, system-wide outages affecting critical business operations, or safety-related incidents.
  • Major (Medium Impact): Events that disrupt operations but have limited long-term financial or reputational damage. Must be addressed in a timely manner.
    • Examples: Performance degradation affecting non-core systems, localized outages, or issues causing moderate delays.
  • Minor (Low Impact): Events with minimal business impact. These can be resolved when resources become available.
    • Examples: Minor performance issues, cosmetic UI errors, or incidents affecting internal non-critical systems.

Roles and Responsibilities

Clear roles ensure effective event handling and prioritization:

Operations Manager

  • Responsibilities: Assess events based on safety, financial, and reputational impact. Assign priority levels and allocate resources accordingly. Ensure clear escalation paths for critical issues.
  • Actions: Review ongoing events, prioritize, and coordinate resource deployment.

Incident Responder

  • Responsibilities: Address events based on assigned priority. Focus on minimizing risk and impact. Escalate issues as required to ensure timely resolution.
  • Actions: Follow predefined response plans, escalate critical events, and provide updates to stakeholders.

Automation Specialist

  • Responsibilities: Automate responses to lower-priority events to reduce manual intervention. Ensure automated systems are reliable and support resource efficiency.
  • Actions: Develop and maintain automation scripts, monitor automated processes, and implement optimizations.

Resource Allocation Strategy

  • High-Priority Events: Immediate intervention by dedicated resources. Use predefined runbooks and escalate to ensure a swift response.
  • Medium-Priority Events: Address once critical issues are resolved. Allocate resources based on availability, with ongoing monitoring.
  • Low-Priority Events: Tackle as resources permit, leveraging automation where possible to minimize manual workload.

Escalation Path Guidelines

  • Purpose: Ensure high-impact events are escalated to the appropriate decision-makers.
  • Details: Specify conditions for escalation, contact lists, and authorized personnel. Include paths for safety incidents, financial threats, or reputational risks.

Automation Strategies

  • Automate repetitive or low-impact tasks to streamline operations.
    • Examples: AWS Lambda for diagnostics, AWS Systems Manager Automation for routine remediation, or scaling services during peak loads.
  • Focus human resources on high-impact events, improving overall efficiency and response time.

Communication Protocols

  • High-Impact Events: Immediate notification to all relevant stakeholders. Outline impact, actions, and expected resolution times.
  • Medium and Low-Impact Events: Regular updates based on event severity. Ensure stakeholders are aware of ongoing efforts and potential impacts.

Supporting Tools

Monitoring and Prioritization

  • Amazon CloudWatch Alarms: Set alerts for key metrics, ensuring rapid response based on business impact.
  • AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter: Centralize issue tracking and prioritize events efficiently.

Incident Management

  • AWS Systems Manager Incident Manager: Manage incidents with preconfigured workflows for effective response and escalation.
  • Amazon SNS: Automate notifications to relevant teams, ensuring prompt awareness and engagement.

Automation

  • AWS Lambda: Automate responses for lower-priority events, enabling resource focus on critical incidents.
  • AWS Systems Manager Automation: Execute automated tasks for consistent and efficient event handling.

Artifacts

  1. Event Categorization Guide: This document, outlining impact assessment criteria and priority assignment.
  2. Resource Allocation Plan: Details how resources are distributed based on event priority.
  3. Escalation Path Document: Procedures for escalating high-impact events, complete with contact information and authority levels.
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