What is a Security Incident?

To understand security incident reporting, we must first define a security incident. Although the most basic definition of a security incident is “an intrusion or attempted intrusion”, organizations define the term security incident depending on the importance of security to their specific industry. A security incident implies/requires unauthorized access to facilities, equipment, and resources with intent to damage or harm.

Security protects these facilities, equipment, and resources from physical circumstances and events that could cause severe losses or damage to an enterprise, agency, or institution. This includes protection from fire, natural disasters, burglary, theft, vandalism, and terrorism.

Organizations like government agencies, embassies, and corporations that deal in highly sensitive or critical areas have extreme security measures. These are designed to deny unauthorized access to facilities, equipment, and resources and to protect personnel and property from damage or harm.

This type of security can involve multiple layers of interdependent systems, including CCTV (closed-circuit television) surveillance, security guards, protective barriers, locks, access control protocols, and many other techniques. Security incident reporting is crucial for these organizations.

Organizations whose activities are neither sensitive nor critical may not require high levels of security but must still use basic security measures to protect their assets and report and repair security incidents.

The Severity of a Security Incident

Regardless of industry, the severity of a security incident is a subjective measure of its impact on or threat to the operation and integrity of an organization. The severity of an incident determines the priority for handling the incident, who manages the incident, and the timing and extent of the response. 

Two significant factors in determining severity are the scope of impact – how many people, departments, or systems the incident affects – and the criticality of the affected asset – how essential is it to the continuing operation of the organization? What would be the impact on the organization, either functional or financial, if this asset were unavailable or corrupted?

What is Security Incident Reporting

A part of the incident management process, security incident reporting is the activities and tools that an organization uses to identify and classify security incidents for investigation, repair, or management.

What types of Organizations use Security Incident Reporting?

Security is something that affects all types of organizations and is not Industry-specific. Efficient and timely security incident reporting can benefit every industry to report and manage security incidents, from Federal penitentiaries to foreign embassies to private security patrol companies.

What is the Purpose of Security Incident Reporting?

Security incident reporting aims to clearly define and communicate the characteristics of security incidents so they can be appropriately classified and treated by incident management processes. To be effective, security incident reporting must capture precise and incident-specific details and communicate these to the appropriate people quickly and efficiently.

The report will then trigger an organization’s incident response, which is an organized approach to addressing and managing the aftermath of a security breach or incident. The goal of any organization is to handle the situation in a way that limits damage and reduces recovery time and costs. For these reasons, it is critical that security incident reporting be as comprehensive, timely, and efficient as possible.

The Evolution of Security Incident Reporting

Traditional paper-based systems for security incident reporting had obvious inefficiencies associated with capturing the incident details and relaying these to the right people, especially for urgent incidents. More contemporary Incident reporting software and even mobile solutions have emerged in response to these, yet the inefficiencies still exist.

Security Incident Reporting and Efficiency

Efficiency in security incident reporting is determined by how comprehensive the report details are and how quickly they can be communicated. Additionally, a critical factor in ensuring efficiency is appropriate notifications. Existing security incident reporting solutions may provide a tool to report incidents. Still, typically forms are rigid, and notifications are not triggered based on the specific details within the report itself.

This rigidity and lack of intelligence results in 2 types of inefficiencies for security incident reporting and incident management; incomplete data capture and notifications that are not detail-dependent. With incomplete data, additional site visits may be necessary to confirm details, adding time and cost to the process.

In the case of notifications, the lack of intelligence in existing security incident reporting solutions means that notifications are sent to everyone or the same group of people each time, regardless of the details associated with the specific incident, causing notification overload and the potential for oversight.

A True Solution to Security Incident Reporting

Developed with the goal of efficiency, the 1^ST Reporting Mobile App provides a proper solution for security incident reporting. 1^ST Reporting allows users to quickly report all the details of specific security incidents (field events or damage), including precise location, date/time, and asset-specific information, and to attach multi-media files (pictures, audio, and video).

Due to its mobility, the 1^ST Reporting Mobile App’s security incident reporting is onsite and immediate, permitting faster response times. With dynamic fields specific to security incident reporting, and the ability to control what information must be submitted, reports are comprehensive. This facilitates the assessment process and eliminates the need for unnecessary site visits.

1^ST generates a field incident or inspection report, automatically sent by a specific department or operations personnel for confirmation and action. With a very sophisticated notification management process, the security incident report allows for notification distribution lists based on incident-specific criteria, thus eliminating nuisance notifications and increasing workflow efficiency.

What Makes 1^ST Reporting Mobile Application Different?

What sets the 1^ST Reporting Mobile app apart from other security incident reporting applications is that it is an Intelligence-led mobile solution. This intelligence allows 1ST to solve the problem of inefficient capture and communication of field incidents while other security incidents reporting solutions continue to cause inefficiencies.

1ST’s use of dynamic fields to enable complete and security incident-specific detail capture and its support of multi-media file attachments make it unique as an actual solution to data capture. Its complex and intelligent notification logic, which allows recipient lists to be defined at a very granular level, solves the problem of notification inefficiencies.

This intelligence behind the complete data capture and the sophisticated notification management makes the 1ST Reporting Mobile app a real solution to the problem of inefficiencies in security incident reporting and what truly sets 1^ST apart from any other security incident reporting mobile applications.

Additionally, 1^ST can connect directly to existing enterprise systems (for work order management, labor estimates, material requirements, etc.), further streamlining the incident management process.

An Example of 1^ST’s Efficiency in Security Incident Reporting

In a typical example of security incident reporting, a security patrol officer of a utility company reports a security incident (breach) at the substation’s location. The 1^ST Reporting Mobile app’s security incident report can automatically capture the exact (GPS) location of the incident and allow the security patrol officer to report precise details based on the fields selected and the values in those fields.

The application also supports sending multi-media file attachments for even more precision. So if the security incident is simply graffiti painted on the wall, the details can be entered, a picture taken and sent, and notifications will be sent to the appropriate cleanup crew.

Suppose the same security incident report indicates that the fenced perimeter has been compromised. In that case, the notification of this incident might be very different. Possibly, a security crew would be dispatched to the location as well as an electric crew, so that the facility could be inspected safely.

Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information about our Security Incident Reporting technology.