Incident Lifecycle Overview#

An incident is an unplanned disruption to a service requiring coordinated response. The lifecycle has six phases: detection, triage, communication, mitigation, resolution, and review. Each has defined actions, owners, and exit criteria.

Phase 1: Detection#

Incidents are detected through three channels. Automated monitoring is best – alerts fire on SLO violations or error thresholds before users notice. Internal reports come from other teams noticing issues with dependencies. Customer reports are worst case – if users detect your incidents first, your observability has gaps.

Incident Response Overview#

Security incidents in infrastructure environments follow a predictable lifecycle. The difference between a contained incident and a catastrophic breach is usually preparation and speed of response. This playbook covers the six phases of incident response with specific commands and procedures for Kubernetes and containerized infrastructure.

The phases are sequential but overlap in practice: you may be containing one aspect of an incident while still detecting the full scope.