Incident Response Plan

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Crisis Management

Another process that many organizations plan for separately is crisis management (CM) An organization’s set of planning and preparation efforts for dealing with potential human injury, emotional trauma, or loss of life as a result of a disaster. , which focuses more on the effects that a disaster has on people than its effects on information assets. While some organizations include crisis management as a subset of the DR plan, the protection of human life and the organization’s image is such a high priority that it may deserve its own committee, policy, and plan. Thus, the organization should form a crisis management planning team (CMPT), which then organizes a crisis management response team (CMRT). The appropriate DRRT works closely with the CMRT to assure complete and timely communication during a disaster. According to Gartner Research, the crisis management team is responsible for managing the event from an enterprise perspective and performs the following roles:

  • Supporting personnel and their loved ones during the crisis

  • Keeping the public informed about the event and the actions being taken to ensure the recovery of personnel and the enterprise

  • Communicating with major customers, suppliers, partners, regulatory agencies, industry organizations, the media, and other interested parties*

    Witty, R. “What is Crisis Management?” Gartner Online, September 19, 2001. Accessed 7/13/15 from www.gartner.com/doc/340971.

The CMPT should establish a base of operations or command center near the site of the disaster as soon as possible. The CMPT should include individuals from all functional areas of the organization in order to facilitate communications and cooperation. The CMPT is charged with three primary responsibilities:

  1. Verifying Personnel Status—Everyone must be accounted for, including individuals who are on vacations, leaves of absence, and business trips.

  2. Activating the Alert Roster—Alert rosters and general personnel phone lists are used to notify individuals whose assistance may be needed or simply to tell employees not to report to work until the disaster is over.

  3. Coordinating with Emergency Services—If someone is injured or killed during a disaster, the CM response team will work closely with fire officials, police, medical response units, and the Red Cross to provide appropriate services to all affected parties as quickly as possible.

The CMPT should plan an approach for releasing information in the event of a disaster and should perhaps even have boilerplate scripts prepared for press releases. Advice from Lanny Davis, former counselor to President Bill Clinton, is relevant here. When beset by damaging events, heed the subtitle to Davis’s memoir: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself.*

Davis, L. Truth to Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself: Notes from My White House Education. New York: Free Press, May 1999.

As with IR, DR, and BC, if CM is organized and conducted as a separate entity, it should have a CM policy The policy document that guides the development and implementation of CM plans and the formulation and performance of CM teams. and a CM plan The documented product of crisis management planning; a plan that shows the organization’s intended efforts to protect its personnel and respond to safety threats. . The methodologies for CM policies and CM planning (CMP) The actions taken by senior management to develop and implement the CM policy, plan, and response teams. can follow the same basic models as DR policies and plans, but they should include additional content focused on personnel safety (such as shelter areas), evacuation plans, contact information for emergency services, and the like.

For more information, including crisis management materials focused on crises in schools, visit the Department of Defense Educational Activity site at www.dodea.edu/crisis/.

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