Incident Command System for Technology Folks

I propose a talk on the how to apply the Incident Command System (ICS) to System Administrators. ICS is a standard management hierarchy and procedures for managing temporary incidents of any size. ICS includes procedures to create temporary management hierarchies to control funds, personnel, facilities, equipment, and communications needed to respond to an incident. It is designed to be applied from from the time an incident occurs until it no longer exists. ICS's benefits are being able to cope with any size or complexity of an incident from a single disk crash to an entire datacenter going down, allow personnel from a wide variety of organizations to rapidly come together with a common terminology, set up structures to provide logistical and administrative support, and is cost effective by avoiding duplication of efforts. ICS started out as a way to coordinate responses to wildfires in the West. It was used successfully during the response to the Twin Towers attack in NYC, and in 2003 became part of the National Incident Management System. It has over 30 years of testing in real world scenarios in emergency management, at school districts, military, and hospitals. Because it is a national system that all groups use, by learning and using it you will be using the same terminology as the people you call in for help. In this talk I will cover a brief history of ICS, its core concepts, terminology, organizational processes, and essential principles of ICS and show how they can be applied in the Technology arena. We will cover the following: * The difference between an Incident and an Event * The key concepts of ICS * ICS command structure * Responsibilities for each command area * Run through an example of applying it for a Technology incidents