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Is your incident management solution creating more problems than it solves?

Aaron Lober
|
4.11.2023

When it comes to incident response, the ability to adapt and customize your approach is key. Every organization has unique needs and workflows, and a one-size-fits-all solution simply won't cut it. That's why Blameless is proud to offer a flexible platform that allows teams to tailor their incident response process to fit their exact requirements. In this blog post, we'll explore three of the many areas where Blameless' platform flexibility shines: custom incident checklists, flexible incident channel naming, and role-based access controls.

Custom Incident Checklists

One of the most powerful features of Blameless is the ability to create custom incident checklists. When an incident occurs, having a well-defined process to follow can make all the difference in ensuring that the issue is resolved quickly and efficiently. Responders feel less stress and can focus on higher-impact areas when they can follow a predefined workflow. However, every organization has different requirements for their incident response process. With Blameless, you can easily create custom checklists that align with your team's specific needs.

Incident Checklists - Examples

For example, perhaps your team relies heavily on external vendors for certain services, and you need to ensure that the right stakeholders are contacted in the event of an incident. You could create a checklist that includes steps such as "Notify Vendor X" and "Schedule Call with Vendor Y". Alternatively, maybe your team uses a specific incident management framework, such as ITIL or DevOps, and you want to ensure that your process is aligned with those best practices. You could create a checklist that includes steps such as "Determine Severity Level" and "Escalate to Level 2 Support".

With Blameless, the possibilities are endless. You can create as many custom incident checklists as you need, and easily assign them to different incident types or severity levels, or to different roles in each incident. Plus, the checklist is fully customizable, so you can add or remove steps as your process evolves over time. This flexibility ensures that your incident response process is always tailored to your team's unique needs.

Flexible Incident Channel Naming

In addition to custom incident checklists, Blameless also offers flexible incident channel naming. When an incident occurs, it's important to have clear communication channels in place to ensure that everyone is on the same page. However, every organization has different naming conventions. These can make a big difference in the level of difficulty that responders to multiple, simultaneous incidents experience while navigating slack or MSTeams. With Blameless, you can easily customize the names of your incident channels to fit your team's preferences and enable your on-call team to focus on the most urgent incidents.

Incident Channel Naming - Examples

For example, perhaps your team uses a specific naming convention for incident channels based on the type of service that is affected. You could customize your incident channels to include names such as "Product A Incidents" or "Marketing Campaign Incidents". Alternatively, maybe your team uses a specific naming convention based on the severity level of the incident. You could customize your incident channels to include names such as "Sev 1 Incidents" or "Sev 2 Incidents".

With Blameless, you can customize the names of your incident channels to fit your team's specific requirements. This flexibility ensures that your team can quickly and easily identify the appropriate channel for communication during an incident, reducing confusion and improving response times.

Role-Based Access Controls

Finally, Blameless offers robust role-based access controls to ensure that the right people have access to the right information during an incident. When an incident occurs, it's important to ensure that the appropriate stakeholders are involved in the response process. However, not everyone on your team needs access to every aspect of the incident response platform. Exposing every aspect to everyone on your team could violate your information handling compliance, or just obscure the most vital information with unnecessary baggage. With Blameless, you can easily define roles and permissions to ensure that everyone has access to the information they need, without exposing sensitive information to unauthorized users.

Let’s explore a couple potential examples.

Incident Commander:

As the leader of the incident response effort, the incident commander requires broad access to the Blameless platform. This might include the ability to create and manage incidents, escalate incidents to higher levels of severity, and view sensitive information related to incidents. To support these requirements, the incident commander might be assigned a custom role within Blameless that grants them full access to all aspects of the platform.

Customer Success Manager:

The customer success manager is responsible for maintaining strong relationships with customers, and may be involved in incidents that affect customers directly. While they don't need full access to the Blameless platform, they may need to view certain incident details or updates to communicate with customers. To support these requirements, the customer success manager might be assigned a custom role that grants them read-only access to certain aspects of the platform, such as the incident timeline or post-incident reports.

Security Engineer:

The security engineer is responsible for ensuring that incidents related to security threats are handled appropriately. They require access to sensitive information related to incidents, such as log files or configuration data. However, they may not need access to all aspects of the Blameless platform. To support these requirements, the security engineer might be assigned a custom role that grants them access to specific incident details, such as log files or configuration data, but not broader access to the platform.

By defining custom roles and permissions for each stakeholder, the organization can ensure that each person has access to the information they need to be effective during an incident, without exposing sensitive information to unauthorized users. This approach helps to streamline the incident response process, reduce confusion, and ensure that incidents are resolved quickly and efficiently.

Conclusion

Incident management can be complex but that doesn’t mean you should settle for a one size fits all solution that doesn’t meet your needs. For more information about Blameless or to schedule a demo, visit us a blameless.com

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