[author: Elle Tsivka]
A single outage can spiral into hours of downtime, frustrated customers, and significant revenue loss across your business.
And even the most skilled teams can be hampered by a weak operational framework. In many cases, the foundation for managing incidents is ambiguous, untested, or missing key components – making it harder to respond quickly and effectively when it matters most.
According to Uptime Intelligence’s 2025 Annual Outage Analysis, over half of organizations reported that their most recent major outage cost more than $100,000. Numbers like that highlight the importance of preparation. But reaching actual incident readiness means facing some hard truths about where most teams struggle.
The good news is that once you identify those gaps, bridging them is actually the easy part. By systematically reinforcing your incident management foundation, you simultaneously empower your team to move beyond reactive firefighting (like scrambling to fix outages with no clear plan) and build a true culture of resilience. Let’s dive in.
-
Operating Without Clear or Up-to-Date Response Plans
An outdated or non-existent response plan is a recipe for failure during a crisis. Teams are forced to improvise under immense pressure, a situation where communication falters, critical decisions are delayed, and small errors snowball into major problems. Beyond the operational chaos, this lack of documented procedure can lead to significant compliance violations and regulatory penalties.
This unfolded dramatically during a well-known ransomware attack on a vital U.S. energy company. Faced with compromised systems, the organization shut down a fuel pipeline that served millions of Americans, triggering widespread shortages and national headlines. The aftermath revealed a crucial weakness. Their incident response plans were not adequately tested or prepared for such a sophisticated attack. This became a stark cautionary tale. Even after a multi-million dollar ransom was paid, the steepest price came from intense public scrutiny and the erosion of customer trust.
Solution: Build a Living, Actionable Response Strategy
To prevent these outcomes, your response plans must be living documents, not static artifacts on a shelf. They should be clear, actionable, and tailored to your unique risk profile. This involves a cycle of continuous improvement, including:
- Conducting regular Business Impact Analyses (BIAs) to identify critical business functions and the systems that support them
- Creating practical incident playbooks for high-likelihood or high-impact scenarios like ransomware or data breaches
- Assigning clear ownership for reviewing and updating all response plans on a scheduled basis
- Testing plans through tabletop exercises or live simulations to uncover weaknesses before a real incident forces your hand
Clear and tested documentation provides the framework for an effective response. It empowers your team to replace reactive chaos with confident, structured action.
-
Lack of Clearly Defined Roles During an Incident
Chaos emerges if team members do not know who is responsible for what. Key decisions are delayed, accountability vanishes, and critical actions are missed entirely. This creates an environment of confusion where people either work at cross purposes or assume someone else has it covered. Even the most expert teams will falter without clear direction.
Solution: Start By Mapping Your Key Players
Start by clearly defining key roles, including leads for communication, operations, technical response, and executive coordination. Each team member should understand their responsibilities and how they’ll work together during a crisis.
For example, the Communications Lead should manage messaging across internal teams, leadership, customers, and external stakeholders. Support this role by mapping out who needs information, what they need to know, and when. This brings order to the response, reduces confusion, and helps maintain trust.
-
Poor Communication and Coordination
When an incident strikes, information is everything. Without a clear communication plan, response efforts quickly devolve into chaos. Teams work in silos, sending scattered updates through a mix of emails, texts, and direct messages. Critical details get lost. Stakeholders receive conflicting information, and leadership is left guessing. This confusion delays resolution and erodes trust, making the organization appear disorganized when it matters most.
Solution: Create a Central Hub for Incident Communication
Effective communication must be structured and centralized. Start by establishing an official channel for incident management, such as an emergency notification system, and ensure everyone knows how to use it. Empower your Communications Lead to manage the flow of information, using pre-approved templates for consistency. Finally, maintain a central incident log or dashboard as the single source of truth. This provides real-time visibility for all stakeholders, eliminates guesswork, and ensures everyone works from the same facts, turning communication into a powerful tool for faster resolution.
-
Inconsistent or Infrequent Training
An incident management plan that sits on a shelf offers little real protection. When training is infrequent or treated as a one-time compliance task, teams never develop the instincts or coordination needed to respond effectively under pressure. Inexperienced staff hesitate. Key steps are missed. The problem grows as roles shift and new employees inherit responsibilities they were never trained to handle.
According to Uptime Intelligence’s 2025 Annual Outage Analysis, “The failure of staff to follow procedures has become an even greater cause of outages than in the previous year, suggesting a major opportunity to reduce incidents through training and process review.” The takeaway is clear: without regular, hands-on training, even the best-laid plans will fail when it matters most.
Solution: Turn Your Plan Into Action with Realistic Drills
The only way to ensure your plan works is to practice it. Move beyond simple policy reviews and conduct regular, scenario-based training. Start with tabletop exercises where your cross-functional team walks through a simulated crisis, like a data breach or natural disaster. This allows them to clarify roles, identify gaps, and build the confidence to make decisions under pressure.
After every drill, hold a review to discuss what worked and what needs improvement. This feedback loop is essential for refining your plan and strengthening your team. Regular practice turns your response plan into something your team can use, helping them build the skills and confidence to handle any incident.
-
Poor Recordkeeping Preventing Continuous Improvement
After an incident is resolved, the real work of improvement begins. But what happens when there’s no reliable record of the events? Without clear documentation of the decisions and actions taken, you lose the ability to learn and close the gaps in your response strategy. Over time, valuable knowledge vanishes, exposing your organization to serious compliance and legal risks for failing to demonstrate due diligence.
Solution: Build a System for Continuous Improvement
Build a structured process for learning from every incident. Assign someone on the response team the responsibility of documenting key actions, decisions, and communications in real time.
After the event, conduct a blame-free post-mortem review to analyze what happened and identify opportunities for improvement. The final and most critical step is to turn those insights into action. Create a closed-loop system to update your playbooks, training, and tools, ensuring that valuable lessons are never lost. This intentional process protects your organization and turns every incident into a driver for future resilience.
Elevate Your Incident Management Strategy
Effective incident management is a continuous discipline. True organizational resilience is built by systematically addressing key challenges, from clarifying plans and roles to conducting realistic training. This focused approach creates a powerful cycle of improvement that prepares your team to handle any disruption with confidence.
[View source.]
