Crisis and Incident Management Glossary

Glossary

Application Impact Assessment — AIA

An application impact assessment is a process used to evaluate the potential effects of implementing changes, updates, or new software applications on an organization’s existing systems, infrastructure, and business processes.

AlertMedia

AlertMedia is a cloud-based communication platform, emergency notification system (ENS), and situational intelligence vendor that enables businesses to send and receive notifications quickly and efficiently from anywhere.

Black Swan Event

A black swan event refers to an unpredictable event with severe consequences, often characterized by its rarity and wide-reaching impact.

Business Resiliency Professionals Association — BRPA

BRPA is an independent professional organization focused on education and information exchange related to disaster recovery planning, business continuity planning, crisis management, and overall organizational resiliency, primarily serving professionals in the Chicago area.

Center of Excellence — CoE

A center of excellence is a centralized unit of dedicated people with a mission to streamline access to scarce, high-demand capabilities for rapid execution across the business. This group hones expertise in a specific subject area, standardizes best practices for wide-scale adoption, and provides thought leadership and direction in their area of expertise.​​​​​​​

Crisis Communication Plan

A crisis communication plan is a structured approach for managing internal and external communications during an emergency.

Crisis/Incident Management — C/IM

Crisis/incident management is the application of strategies designed to help an organization deal with a sudden and significant negative event.​​​​​​​

Crisis Management Plan — CMP

The overall direction of an organization’s response to a disruptive event with the goal of minimizing damage to profitability, reputation, and the ability to operate.

Disaster Recovery Journal — DRJ

The Disaster Recovery Journal is the industry’s largest resource for business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis communication, and risk management.

Downtime

Downtime refers to the period during which a system, service, or business function is unavailable.

Emergency Management

Emergency management refers to the coordination of resources and procedures to prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from emergencies.

Emergency Notification System — ENS

An emergency notification system is a method of facilitating the one-way dissemination or broadcast of messages to one or many groups of people, alerting them to a pending or existing emergent situation.

Event Detection

Event detection is the process of identifying potential disruptions through monitoring tools and early warning systems.

Everbridge — EVB

Everbridge is a mass notification system (sometimes referred to as an emergency notification system) that helps organizations and emergency officials communicate critical information during emergencies.

Scenario Testing

Scenario testing is the assessment of a firm’s ability to remain within its impact tolerance for each of its important business services in the event of a severe but plausible disruption of its services.

• Allows organizations to know the “now” status of important services, model “what if” scenarios, rehearse, and measure response.
• Inputs form: An inputs form gives teams the ability to input what assets (sites, teams, applications, vendors) are disrupted by an event and for how long.
• Scenario Engine: A scenario engine is an analysis engine that takes the inputs and the mapped interdependencies and computes the impact and findings.

Situational Intelligence — SI

Situational intelligence combines traditional situational awareness with the collective intelligence of those at the center of a situation, resulting in a dynamic process in which data is gathered and interpreted and the information is shared.

System Impact Assessment — SIA

A system impact assessment is an evaluation of how a proposed change will affect a system.

Technology Impact Assessment — TIA

A technology impact assessment is a structured process of evaluating how the implementation of a new technology could affect an organization across various aspects, including its operations, people, processes, and overall business environment.