Starting with Incident management career

by Kaushik Thirthappa

Businesses and organisations are increasingly reliant on technology for their operations, the significance of alerting platforms has become paramount. Alerting platforms encompass the processes that enable organisations to acknowledge, respond, and to reduce various types of incidents that can impact their services.

Incident alerts enable prompt responses,at the right time and minimise potential damage. In this article, we delve into the crucial role of incident alerts and managing incidents, examine recent real-time incidents that underscore their importance, and shed light on how individuals can embark on a career as Incident manager.

The significance of alerts

Incident alerts connect incidents with the right responders  so they can respond quickly.

When an incident is triggered, escalation policies promptly alerts dedicated team members   or on-call members, triggering immediate action.

  1. Twitter Outage (July 2021): Twitter experienced a widespread outage that affected users across the globe. During the incident, users were unable to access their Twitter feeds, post tweets, or interact with the platform. This outage highlights the importance of real-time incident management and how alerts come into play.
  2. Facebook Outage (October 2021):Facebook, along with its platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, experienced a major outage that lasted for several hours. Users around the world reported issues accessing and using these platforms. The outage was attributed to a configuration change that disrupted network traffic.
  3. Facebook Outage (October 2021): AWS,faced an outage that affected numerous websites and services hosted on its platform. Companies relying on AWS experienced an outage of some form during the AWS outage.
  4. Google Services Outage (December 2020): Google’s  outage impacted various services, including Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube. Users reported issues accessing emails, files, and videos. The outage was caused by an issue with Google's authentication system.
  5. Microsoft Azure Outage (November 2021): Microsoft Azure,faced an outage that impacted many services, including Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365. The outage was attributed to an issue with authentication services, underscoring the interconnected nature of cloud services.

When incidents of this criticality trigger, alerts are immediately triggered through various channels such as phone calls, email, SMS, ensuring that the right people are notified immediately. As a result, the incident response team can triage the situation, identify the root cause and initiate the necessary remediation steps.

Embark a career in incident management

You have a range of options to explore. Here's a glimpse:

1. Education and training:
Start with building a strong foundation. Online courses and certifications are available providing a comprehensive understanding of incident detection, response, and recovery.

2. Develop technical expertise:
A good grasp in DevOps, security, System administrations, etc could be helpful. You must definitely check the DevOps roadmap here.

3.  Networking and community engagement:
Engage with the incident management community. Attend workshops, and webinars to stay updated on the latest trends, share experiences, and learn from industry experts.

4. Gain practical experience:
Internships, volunteer opportunities, and entry-level positions within incident response teams can provide hands-on experience. Gain more internship insights with Internset.

Respond quickly, minimise damage and preserve trust - this is the basis of Incident management. Real-time incidents serve as stark reminders of the pivotal role incident management plays in safeguarding our digital landscape. As organisations continue to fortify their response in capabilities, the demand for skilled professionals in this field remains strong.

You can find more materials on incident management, similar to the ones shared here.

Oh No! Incident management 
Actionable alerting!

Explore the option of following proficient incident managers with a track record in renowned organisations.

  1. Brent Chapman: Brent Chapman carries an impressive foundation in IT infrastructure and site reliability engineering. His proficiency solidifies his position as a standout incident manager within the industry.He has contributed his expertise to Slack & Google.
  2. Tammy Butow: Tammy Butow, known for her work in site reliability engineering and chaos engineering. She discusses chaos engineering, incident management, and system resilience. She has worked for Dropbox.
  3. John Allspaw: Known for his work at Etsy, John Allspaw has an expertise in the incident management field. Also provides insights into incident response practices and system reliability through twitter.

All systems, operations, are continuously monitored and kept up and running by a bunch of unsung heroes. These are peers we are sure you will enjoy having.