"text":"This documentation covers parts of the Spearhead Systems technical support response process. It is used at Spearhead Systems for any technical issue (incident or service request), and to prepare new employees for technical support responsibilities. It provides information not only on preparing for an incident or service request, but also what to do during and after. It is intended to be used by those involved in our operational technical support response process (or those wishing to become part of our support team). See the \nabout page\n for more information on what this documentation is and why it exists. \nThis documentation is complementary to what is available in our \nexisting wiki\n and other systems that have not been open sourced.\n\n\n\n\nIssue: Incidents and Service Request\n\n\nAt Spearhead we use the term \nissue\n to define any request that we receive. Issues fall into two categories: \"Service Requests (SR)\" and \"Incidents (IN)\". An IN will generally be an issue that has impact on the normal functioning of the business while a SR generally does not.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBeing On-Call\n#\n\n\nIf you've never been on-call before or part of a support delivery team, you might be wondering what it's all about. These pages describe what the expectations are, along with some resources to help you.\n\n\n\n\nBeing On-Call\n - \nA guide to being on-call, both what your responsibilities are, and what they are not.\n\n\nAlerting Principles\n - \nThe principles we use to determine what things notify an engineer, and what time of day they do so.\n\n\n\n\nBefore an Incident\n#\n\n\nReading material for things you want to know before an incident occurs. You don't want to be reading these during an actual incident.\n\n\n\n\nSeverity Levels\n - \nInformation on our severity level classification. What constitutes a Low issue? What's a \"Major Incident\"?, etc.\n\n\nDifferent Roles for Incidents\n - \nInformation on the roles during an incident; Team Leader, Sysadmin, etc.\n\n\nIncident Call Etiquette\n - \nOur etiquette guidelines for incident calls, before you find yourself in one.\n\n\n\n\nDuring an Incident\n#\n\n\nInformation and processes during an incident.\n\n\n\n\nDuring an Incident\n - \nInformation on what to do during an incident, and how to constructively contribute.\n\n\nSecurity Incident Response\n - \nSecurity incidents are handled differently to normal operational incidents.\n\n\n\n\nAfter an Incident\n#\n\n\nOur followup processes, how we make sure we don't repeat mistakes and are always improving.\n\n\n\n\nPost-Mortem Process\n - \nInformation on our post-mortem process; what's involved and how to write or run a post-mortem.\n\n\nPost-Mortem Template\n - \nThe template we use for writing our post-mortems for major incidents.\n\n\n\n\nTraining\n#\n\n\nSo, you want to learn about incident response? You've come to the right place.\n\n\n\n\nTraining Overview\n - \nAn overview of our training guides and additional training material from third-parties.\n\n\nIncident Commander Training\n - \nA guide to becoming our next Incident Commander.\n\n\nDeputy Training\n - \nHow to be a deputy and back up the Incident Commander.\n\n\nScribe Training\n - \nA guide to scribing.\n\n\nSubject Matter Expert Training\n - \nA guide on responsibilities and behavior for all participants in a major incident.\n\n\nGlossary of Incident Response Terms\n - \nA collection of terms that you may hear being used, along with their definition.\n\n\n\n\nAdditional Reading\n#\n\n\nUseful material and resources from external parties that are relevant to incident response.\n\n\n\n\nIncident Management for Operations\n (O'Reilly)\n\n\nIncident Response\n (O'Reilly)\n\n\nDebriefing Facilitation Guide\n (Etsy)\n\n\nUS National Incident Management System (NIMS)\n (FEMA)\n\n\nEvery Minute Counts: Leading Heroku's Incident Response\n (Blake Gentry)",
"text":"If you've never been on-call before or part of a support delivery team, you might be wondering what it's all about. These pages describe what the expectations are, along with some resources to help you. Being On-Call - A guide to being on-call, both what your responsibilities are, and what they are not. Alerting Principles - The principles we use to determine what things notify an engineer, and what time of day they do so.",
"text":"Reading material for things you want to know before an incident occurs. You don't want to be reading these during an actual incident. Severity Levels - Information on our severity level classification. What constitutes a Low issue? What's a \"Major Incident\"?, etc. Different Roles for Incidents - Information on the roles during an incident; Team Leader, Sysadmin, etc. Incident Call Etiquette - Our etiquette guidelines for incident calls, before you find yourself in one.",
"text":"Information and processes during an incident. During an Incident - Information on what to do during an incident, and how to constructively contribute. Security Incident Response - Security incidents are handled differently to normal operational incidents.",
"title":"During an Incident"
},
{
"location":"/#after-an-incident",
"text":"Our followup processes, how we make sure we don't repeat mistakes and are always improving. Post-Mortem Process - Information on our post-mortem process; what's involved and how to write or run a post-mortem. Post-Mortem Template - The template we use for writing our post-mortems for major incidents.",
"title":"After an Incident"
},
{
"location":"/#training",
"text":"So, you want to learn about incident response? You've come to the right place. Training Overview - An overview of our training guides and additional training material from third-parties. Incident Commander Training - A guide to becoming our next Incident Commander. Deputy Training - How to be a deputy and back up the Incident Commander. Scribe Training - A guide to scribing. Subject Matter Expert Training - A guide on responsibilities and behavior for all participants in a major incident. Glossary of Incident Response Terms - A collection of terms that you may hear being used, along with their definition.",
"title":"Training"
},
{
"location":"/#additional-reading",
"text":"Useful material and resources from external parties that are relevant to incident response. Incident Management for Operations (O'Reilly) Incident Response (O'Reilly) Debriefing Facilitation Guide (Etsy) US National Incident Management System (NIMS) (FEMA) Every Minute Counts: Leading Heroku's Incident Response (Blake Gentry)",
"text":"A summary of expectations and helpful information for being on-call.\n\n\n\n\nWhat is On-Call?\n#\n\n\nAt Spearhead, being on-call means that you are responsible for monitoring our communications channels and responding to requests at any time. There are two on-call scenarios that you will deal with:\n\n\n\n\nduring your normal work shift\n\n\noutside working hours\n\n\n\n\nFor example, if you are on-call outside normal working hours, should any alarms be triggered by our monitoring solution or a customer emails our support channel, you will receive a \"notification\" (an alert on your mobile device, email, phone call, or SMS, etc.) giving you details on what has broken. \nYou will be expected to gather as much information as possible, create the required cards in our ticketing systems, delegate or assign the card to the right person/watchers and otherwise take whatever actions are necessary in order to resolve the issue. \n\n\n\n\n\nOn-call responsibilities extend beyond normal office hours, and if you are on-call you are expected to be able to respond to issues, even at 2am. This sounds horrible (and it can be), but this is what our customers go through, and is the problem that the Spearhead Systems technical support services is trying to fix!\n\n\nWhen you are on-call during normal working hours you are the central contact for our entire support team. We expect you will delegate and assign the card to your colleagues and only attempt to resolve issues if your current workload permits. \nWhen you are on-call outside working hours you are expected to handle as much of the process as possible and delegate only if it is outside your area of expertise or you encounter problems that require another colleagues input.\n\n\n\n\nWhen in the office\n\n\nYou are generally speaking on-call during your normal working hours even if you are not \nthe\n on-call engineer. This means you are keeping an eye on the cards assigned to you directly or that you are a watcher for. If you are ever in a position that you have no assigned cards and it is not clear what to work on ask a TL or senior Sysadmin to help point you in the right direction.\n\n\n\n\nResponsibilities\n#\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPrepare\n\n\n\n\nHave your laptop and Internet with you (office, home, a phone with a tethering plan, etc).\n\n\nHave a way to charge your phone.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTeam alert escalation happens within 30 minutes, set/stagger your notification timeouts (push, SMS, phone...) accordingly.\n\n\nMake sure Spearhead Systems (and colleagues directly) texts and calls can bypass your \"Do Not Disturb\" settings.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBe prepared (environment is set up, you have remote access tools ready and functional, your credentials are current, you have Java installed, ssh-keys and so on...)\n\n\nRead our Issue Response documentation (that's this!) to understand how we handle incidents and service requests, what the different roles and methods of communication are, etc.\n\n\nBe aware of your upcoming on-call time (primary, backup) and arrange swaps around travel, vacations, appointments etc.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTriage\n\n\n\n\nAcknowledge and act on alerts whenever you can (see the first \"Not responsibilities\" point below)\n\n\nDetermine the urgency of the problem:\n\n\nIs it something that should be worked on right now or escalated into a major incident? (\"production server on fire\"situations.Securityalerts)-doso.\n\n\nIsitsometacticalworkthatdoesn'thavetohappenduringthenight?(forexample,diskutilizationhighwatermark,butthere'splentyofspaceleftandthetrendisnotindicatingimpendingdoom)-snoozetheissueuntilamoresuitabletime(workinghours,thenextmorning...)andgetbacktofixingitthen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCheckour\ninternalChat\nforcurrentactivity.Often(butnotalways)actionsthatcouldpotentiallycausealertswillbeannouncedthere.\n\n\nDoesthealertandyourinitialinvestigationindicateageneralproblemoranissuewithaspecificservicethattherelevantteamshouldlookinto?Ifitdoesnotlook
"text":"At Spearhead, being on-call means that you are responsible for monitoring our communications channels and responding to requests at any time. There are two on-call scenarios that you will deal with: during your normal work shift outside working hours For example, if you are on-call outside normal working hours, should any alarms be triggered by our monitoring solution or a customer emails our support channel, you will receive a \"notification\" (an alert on your mobile device, email, phone call, or SMS, etc.) giving you details on what has broken. \nYou will be expected to gather as much information as possible, create the required cards in our ticketing systems, delegate or assign the card to the right person/watchers and otherwise take whatever actions are necessary in order to resolve the issue. On-call responsibilities extend beyond normal office hours, and if you are on-call you are expected to be able to respond to issues, even at 2am. This sounds horrible (and it can be), but this is what our customers go through, and is the problem that the Spearhead Systems technical support services is trying to fix! When you are on-call during normal working hours you are the central contact for our entire support team. We expect you will delegate and assign the card to your colleagues and only attempt to resolve issues if your current workload permits. \nWhen you are on-call outside working hours you are expected to handle as much of the process as possible and delegate only if it is outside your area of expertise or you encounter problems that require another colleagues input. When in the office You are generally speaking on-call during your normal working hours even if you are not the on-call engineer. This means you are keeping an eye on the cards assigned to you directly or that you are a watcher for. If you are ever in a position that you have no assigned cards and it is not clear what to work on ask a TL or senior Sysadmin to help point you in the right direction.",
"text":"Prepare Have your laptop and Internet with you (office, home, a phone with a tethering plan, etc). Have a way to charge your phone. Team alert escalation happens within 30 minutes, set/stagger your notification timeouts (push, SMS, phone...) accordingly. Make sure Spearhead Systems (and colleagues directly) texts and calls can bypass your \"Do Not Disturb\" settings. Be prepared (environment is set up, you have remote access tools ready and functional, your credentials are current, you have Java installed, ssh-keys and so on...) Read our Issue Response documentation (that's this!) to understand how we handle incidents and service requests, what the different roles and methods of communication are, etc. Be aware of your upcoming on-call time (primary, backup) and arrange swaps around travel, vacations, appointments etc. Triage Acknowledge and act on alerts whenever you can (see the first \"Not responsibilities\" point below) Determine the urgency of the problem: Is it something that should be worked on right now or escalated into a major incident? (\"production server on fire\" situations. Security alerts) - do so. Is it some tactical work that doesn't have to happen during the night? (for example, disk utilization high watermark, but there's plenty of space left and the trend is not indicating impending doom) - snooze the issue until a more suitable time (working hours, the next morning...) and get back to fixing it then. Check our internal Chat for current activity. Often (but not always) actions that could potentially cause alerts will be announced there. Does the alert and your initial investigation indicate a general problem or an issue with a specific service that the relevant team should look into? If it does not look like a problem you are the expert for, then escalate to another team member or group. Fix You are empowered to dive into any problem and act to fix it. Involve other team members as necessary: do not hesitate to escalate if you cannot figure out the cause within a reasonable timeframe or if the service / alert is something you have not tackled before. If the issue is not very time sensitive and you have other priority work, make a note of this in DoIT to keep a track of it (with an appropriate severity, comment and due date). Improve If a particular issue keeps happening; if an issue alerts often but turns out to be a preventable non-issue \u2013 perhaps improving this should be a longer-term task. Disks that fill up, logs that should be rotated, noisy alerts...(we use ansible and rundeck, go ahead and start automating!) When we perform a DoD (definition of done) this is good time to bring up recurring issues for discussion. If information is difficult / impossible to find, write it down. Constantly refactor and improve our knowledge base and documentation. Add redundant links and pointers if your mental model of the wiki / codebase does not match the way it is currently organized. Support When your on-call \"shift\" ends, let the next on-call and team know about issues that have not been resolved yet and other experiences of note. Make an effort to cleanly handover necessary information. We use internal Chat , email and DoIT to communicate. This is a best-practice that should be applied whenever there are details that by sharing would benefit the efficiency of the team. If you are making a change that impacts the schedule (adding / removing yourself, for example), let others know since many of us make arrangements around the on-call schedule well in advance. Support each other: when doing activities that might generate plenty of alerts, it is courteous to \"place the service/host in maintenance\" and take it away from the on-call by notifying them and scheduling an override for the duration.",
"text":"No expectation to be the first to acknowledge all of the alerts during the on-call period. Commute (and other necessary distractions) are facts of life, and sometimes it is not possible to receive or act on an alert before it escalates. That's why we have the backup on-call and schedule for. No expectation to fix all issues by yourself. No one knows everything. Your whole team is here to help. There is no shame, and much to be learned, by escalating issues you are not certain about. \"Never hesitate to escalate\". Service owners will always know more about how their stuff works. Especially if our and their documentation is lacking, double-checking with the relevant team avoids mistakes. Measure twice, cut once \u2013 and it's often best to let the subject matter expert do the cutting.",
"text":"Always have a backup schedule. Yes, this means two people being on-call at the same time, however it takes a lot of the stress off of the primary if they know they have a specific backup they can contact, rather than trying to chose a random member of the team. The third-level of your escalation (after backup schedule) should probably be your entire team. This should hopefully never happen, but when it does, it's useful to be able to just get the next available person. Team leaders (TL) are a part of our normal rotation. It gives a better insight into what has been going on. New members of the team should shadow your on-call rotation during the first few weeks. They should get all alerts, and should follow along with what you are doing. (All new employees shadow the Support team for one week of on-call, but it's useful to have new team members shadow your team rotations also.). When going off-call, you should provide a quick summary to the next on-call about any issues that may come up during their shift. A service has been flapping, an issue is likely to re-occur, etc. If you want to be formal, this can be a written report via email, but generally a verbal summary during our morning stand-up is sufficient.",
"text":"You are free to set up your notification rules as you see fit, to match how you would like to best respond to incidents. If you're not sure how to configure them, the Support team has some recommendations,",
"text":"If the current on-call comes into the office at 12pm looking tired, it's not because they're lazy. They probably got paged in the night. Cut them some slack and be nice. Don't close or otherwise modify a card out from under someone else. If you didn't get that specific card assigned to you as owner or a watcher, then you shouldn't be modifying it. Add a comment with your notes instead in the monitoring system and in DoIT. If you are testing something, or performing an action that you know will cause an alert from our monitoring or possibly may be identified as an issue by our customers, it's customary to \"place the host/service in downtime\" and announce all the involved parties, for the time during which you will be testing. Notify the person on-call so they are aware of your testing. \"Never hesitate to escalate\" - Never feel ashamed to rope in someone else if you're not sure how to resolve an issue. Likewise, never look down on someone else if they ask you for help. Always consider covering an hour or so of someone else's on-call time if they request it and you are able. We all have lives which might get in the way of on-call time, and one day it might be you who needs to swap their on-call time in order to have a night out with your friend from out of town. If an issue comes up during your on-call shift for which you got called, you are responsible for resolving it. Even if it takes 3 hours and there's only 1 hour left of your shift. You can hand over to the next on-call if they agree, but you should never assume that's possible.",
"text":"We manage how we get alerted based on many factors such as the customers contractual SLA, the urgency of their request or incident, etc.. \nan alert or notification is something which requires a human to perform an action\n. Based on the severity of the issue (service request or incident) we prioritize accordingly in \nDoIT\n.\n\n\n\n\nMajor Priority Alerts\n\n\nAnything that wakes up a human in the middle of the night should be \nimmediately human actionable\n. If it is none of those things, then we need to adjust the alert to not bother us at those times.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPriority\n\n\nAlerts\n\n\nResponse\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMajor\n\n\nMajor-Priority Spearhead Alert 24/7/365.\n\n\nRequires \nimmediate human action\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNormal\n\n\nNormal-Priority Alert during \nbusiness hours only\n.\n\n\nRequires human action that same working day.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMinor\n\n\nMinor-Priority Alert 24/7/365.\n\n\nRequires human action at some point.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNotification\n\n\nSuppressed Events. No response required.\n\n\nInformational only. We do not need these to clutter our ticketing or inboxes. If they are enabled they should be sent only to required/specific people, not groups.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBoth IN and SR (incidents, service requests) share the same priorities. The actual response / resolution times vary and are based upon contractual agreements with the customer. These details (SLA) are available in DoIT on the organization page.\n\n\nIf you're setting up a new alert/notification, consider the chart above for how you want to alert people. Be mindful of not creating new high-priority alerts if they don't require an immediate response, for example.\n\n\n\n\nAlert Channels\n\n\nPrimarily we use email as the notification/alert methods and all of our customers are encouraged to use this method. Secondly there is the DoIT customer portal which will send alerts to the on-call person(s) and escalate based on SLA/contractual agreements. Thirdly we use our centralized support telephone number and individual phones. This means keeping an eye on your email is essential!\n\n\nSMS and Push notifications are in the pipeline for DoIT. \n\n\n\n\nExamples\n#\n\n\n\"Production service is failing for 75% of requests, automation is unable to resolve.\"_\n#\n\n\nThis would be a \nMajor\n priority IN, requiring immediate human action to resolve.\n\n\n\n\n\"A customer sends an email stating that \"Production server disk space is filling, expected to be full in 48 hours. Log rotation is insufficient to resolve.\"\n#\n\n\nThis would be a \nNormal\n priority SR, requiring human action soon, but not immediately.\n\n\n\n\n\"An SSL certificate is due to expire in one week.\"\n#\n\n\nThis would be a \nMinor\n priority SR, requiring human action some time soon.",
"text":"This would be a Normal priority SR, requiring human action soon, but not immediately.",
"title":"\"A customer sends an email stating that \"Production server disk space is filling, expected to be full in 48 hours. Log rotation is insufficient to resolve.\""
"text":"The first step in any incident response process is to determine what actually constitutes an incident. We have two high level categories for classifying incidents: these are \"SR\" or \"IN\" defintions with an attached priority of \"Minor\", \"Normal\" or \"Major\". \"SR\" are \"Service requests\" initiated by a customer and usually do not constitute a critical issue (there are exceptions) while \"IN\" are \"incidents\" which are generally \"urgent\".\n\n\nAll issues reported to Spearhead are to be classified as either a Service Request or an Incident. Incidents have priority over Service Requests provided that there are no Service Requests with a higher priority. In general you will want to resolve a higher severity SR or IN than a lower one (a \"Major\" priority gets a more intensive response than a \"Normal\" incident for example).\n\n\n\n\nAlways Assume The Worst\n\n\nIf you are unsure which level an incident is (e.g. not sure if IN is Major or Normal), \ntreat it as the higher one\n. During an incident is not the time to discuss or litigate severities, just assume the highest and review during a post-mortem.\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \nSeverity\n\n \nDescription\n\n \nWhat To Do\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nMajor\n\n \n\n \n\n \nThe system is in a critical state and is actively impacting a large number of customers.\n\n \nFunctionality has been severely impaired for a long time, breaking SLA.\n\n \nCustomer-data-exposing security vulnerability has come to our attention.\n\n \n\n \n\n \nSee \nDuring an Incident\n.\n\n \n\n \n\n \nMajor\n\n \n\n \n\n \nFunctionality of virtualization platform is severely impaired.\n\n \nE-mail system is offline.\n\n \n\n \n\n \nSee \nDuring an Incident\n.\n\n \n\n\n \n\n \nNormal\n\n \n\n \n\n \nPartial loss of functionality, only affecting minority of customers.\n\n \nSomething that has the likelihood of becoming Major if nothing is done.\n\n \nNo redundancy in a service (failure of 1 more node will cause outage).\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nWork on issue as your top priority.\n\n \nLiaise with engineers of affected systems to identify cause.\n\n \nIf related to recent deployment, rollback.\n\n \nMonitor status and notice if/when it escalates.\n\n \nMention on Slack if you think it has the potential to escalate.\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nNormal\n\n \n\n \n\n \nPerformance issues (delays, etc). Tasks that require non-immediate attention.\n\n \nJob failure (not impacting alerting).\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nWork on the issue as your first priority (above \"Low\" tasks).\n\n \nMonitor status and notice if/when it escalates.\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nLow\n\n \n\n \n\n \nNormal issues which aren't impacting system use, cosmetic issues, etc.\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nCreate a DoIT card and assign to owner of affected system.\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBe Specific\n\n\nWhen creating Cards in Doit, be as specific as possible and include all necessary details. Include relevant details regarding when the issue started, what may have triggered it, etc.. Document your efforts through worklogs and be specific there as well.",
"text":"Our support services are currently deliviered via a flat organizational structure. \nThere are however several roles in our support team at Spearhead Systems. Certain roles only have one person per incident (e.g. sysadmin), whereas other roles can have multiple people (e.g. Sysadmins, Solution Architects, etc.). It's all about coming together as a team, working the problem, and getting a solution quickly.\n\n\nHere is a rough outline of our role hierarchy, with each role discussed in more detail on the rest of this page.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTeam Leader (TL)\n#\n\n\nWhat is it?\n#\n\n\nA Team Leader acts as the single source of truth of what is currently happening and what is going to happen during an major incident and general ongoing support. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. TL's are also the key elements in a project (boards in DoIT).\n\n\nWhy have one?\n#\n\n\nAs any system grows in size and complexity, things break and cause incidents. The TL is needed to help drive major incidents to resolution by organizing his team towards a common goal. A TL's skillset includes project and resource management skills which are essential in driving both projects and incidents to a smooth resolution.\n\n\nWhat are the responsibilities?\n#\n\n\n\n\nHelp prepare for projects and incidents,\n\n\nSetup communications channels.\n\n\nCreate the DoIT board(s) and other project planning related materials.\n\n\nFunnel people to these communications channels.\n\n\nTrain team members on how to communicate and train other TL's.\n\n\nTrain team members and help them prepare with the proper know-how/tools to deliver the project.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDrive incidents and projects to resolution,\n\n\nGet everyone on the same communication channel.\n\n\nCollect information from team members for their services/area of ownership status.\n\n\nCollect proposed repair actions, then recommend repair actions to be taken.\n\n\nDelegate all repair actions, the TL is NOT a resolver.\n\n\nBe the single authority on system status\n\n\nCommunicate directly with the customers and end-users\n\n\nnot the engineers themselves!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPost Mortem,\n\n\nCreating the initial template right after the incident so people can put in their thoughts while fresh.\n\n\nAssigning the post-mortem after the event is over, this can be done after the call.\n\n\nWork with Managers/Support on scheduling preventive actions.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWho are they?\n#\n\n\nAnyone on the on-call schedule is a TL durin his shift. Trainees are typically on the TL Shadow schedule.\n\n\nHow can I become one?\n#\n\n\nTake a look at our \nTeam Leader training guide\n.\n\n\n\n\nSysadmin\n#\n\n\nWhat is it?\n#\n\n\nA Sysadmin is a direct support role for the Team Leader. This is not a shadow where the person just observes, the Sysadmin is expected to perform important tasks during an incident.\n\n\nWhy have one?\n#\n\n\nIt's important for the TL to focus on the problem at hand, rather than worrying about documenting the steps or monitoring timers. The Sysadmin helps to support the TL and help them stay focussed on the incident.\n\n\nWhat are the responsibilities?\n#\n\n\nThe Sysadmin is expected to:\n\n\n\n\nBring up issues to the TL that may otherwise not be addressed (keeping an eye on timers that have been started, circling back around to missed items from a roll call, etc).\n\n\nBe a \"hot standby\"TL,shouldtheprimaryneedtoeithertransitiontoaSME,orotherwisehavetostepawayfromtheTLrole.\n\n\nCallSME'sorotheron-callengineersasinstructedbytheTeamLeader.\n\n\nManagetheincidentcall,andbepreparedtoremovepeoplefromthecallifinstructedbytheTeamLeader.\n\n\nLiaisewithstakeholdersandprovidestatusupdatesonDoIT(usingworklogsandcomments),internalChatandemail/telefoneasnecessary.\n\n\n\n\nWhoarethey?\n#\n\n\nAnyTeamLeadercanactasaSysadmin.SysadminsneedtobetrainedasanTeamLeaderastheymayberequiredtotakeovercommand.\n\n\nHowcanIbecomeone?\n#\n\n\nTakealookatour\nSysadmintrainingguide\
"text":"A Team Leader acts as the single source of truth of what is currently happening and what is going to happen during an major incident and general ongoing support. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. TL's are also the key elements in a project (boards in DoIT).",
"text":"As any system grows in size and complexity, things break and cause incidents. The TL is needed to help drive major incidents to resolution by organizing his team towards a common goal. A TL's skillset includes project and resource management skills which are essential in driving both projects and incidents to a smooth resolution.",
"text":"Help prepare for projects and incidents, Setup communications channels. Create the DoIT board(s) and other project planning related materials. Funnel people to these communications channels. Train team members on how to communicate and train other TL's. Train team members and help them prepare with the proper know-how/tools to deliver the project. Drive incidents and projects to resolution, Get everyone on the same communication channel. Collect information from team members for their services/area of ownership status. Collect proposed repair actions, then recommend repair actions to be taken. Delegate all repair actions, the TL is NOT a resolver. Be the single authority on system status Communicate directly with the customers and end-users not the engineers themselves! Post Mortem, Creating the initial template right after the incident so people can put in their thoughts while fresh. Assigning the post-mortem after the event is over, this can be done after the call. Work with Managers/Support on scheduling preventive actions.",
"text":"A Sysadmin is a direct support role for the Team Leader. This is not a shadow where the person just observes, the Sysadmin is expected to perform important tasks during an incident.",
"text":"It's important for the TL to focus on the problem at hand, rather than worrying about documenting the steps or monitoring timers. The Sysadmin helps to support the TL and help them stay focussed on the incident.",
"text":"The Sysadmin is expected to: Bring up issues to the TL that may otherwise not be addressed (keeping an eye on timers that have been started, circling back around to missed items from a roll call, etc). Be a \"hot standby\" TL, should the primary need to either transition to a SME, or otherwise have to step away from the TL role. Call SME's or other on-call engineers as instructed by the Team Leader. Manage the incident call, and be prepared to remove people from the call if instructed by the Team Leader. Liaise with stakeholders and provide status updates on DoIT (using worklogs and comments), internal Chat and email/telefone as necessary.",
"text":"A Scribe documents the timeline of an incident as it progresses, and makes sure all important decisions and data are captured for later review. We will not have a dedicated Scibe in all situations therefore a junior will take on this role. This is an essential role as all Juniors are expectd to grow into other areas and take on more responsibilities as they evolve.",
"text":"The Team Leader will need to focus on the problem at hand, and the sysadmins and subject matter experts will need to focus on resolving the incident. It is important to capture a timeline of events as they happen so that they can be reviewed during the post-mortem to determine how well we performed, and so we can accurate determine any additional impact that we might not have noticed at the time.",
"text":"The Scribe is expected to: Ensure the incident call is being recorded. Note in DoIT, internal Chat, etc. important data, events, and actions, as they happen. Specifically: Key actions as they are taken (Example: \"prod-server-387723 is being restarted to attempt to remove the stuck lock\") Status reports when one is provided by the TL (Example: \"We are in IN-Major, service A is currently not processing events due to a stuck lock, X is restarting the app stack, next checkin in 3 minutes\") Any key callouts either during the call or at the ending review (Example: \"Note: (Bob B) We should have a better way to determine stuck locks.\")",
"text":"Anyone can act as a Sribe during an incident, and are chosen by the Team Leader at the start of the call. Typically the Sysadmin will act as the Scribe, but that doesn't necessarily need to happen, and for larger incidents may not be possible.",
"text":"A Subject Matter Expert (SME), sometimes called a \"Resolver\" or \"Architect\", is a domain expert or designated owner of a component or service that is part of the Spearhead Systems service delivery concept.",
"text":"The TL and Sysadmins are not all-knowing super beings. When there is a problem with a service or a particular system, an expert in that service is needed to be able to quickly help identify and fix issues.",
"text":"Being able to diagnose common problems with the service. Being able to rapidly fix issues found during an incident. Concise communication skills, specifically for CAN reports: Condition: What is the current state of the service? Is it healthy or not? Actions: What actions need to be taken if the service is not in a healthy state? Needs: What support does the resolver need to perform an action?",
"text":"Anyone who is considered a \"domain expert\" can act as a resolver for an incident. Typically the service's primary on-call will act as the SME for that service.",
"text":"Take a look at our Subject Matter Expert training guide . You should also discuss with your team and service owner to determine what the requirements are for your particular service.",
"text":"A person responsible for interacting with customers, either directly, or via our public communication channels. This is typically the TL while in some situations another member of the Support Team or even Management may intervene and relay vital information to the customer.",
"text":"All of the other roles will be actively working on identifying the cause and resolving the issue, we need a role which is focused purely on the customer interaction side of things so that it can be done properly, with the due care and attention it needs.",
"text":"Post any publicly facing messages regarding the incident (DoIT, Twitter, etc). Notify the TL of any customers reporting that they are affected by the incident.",
"text":"You've just joined Spearhead Systems support staff and you've never worked in a service delivery function before. You have no idea what an incident or a service request is. You have no idea what's going on, or what you're supposed to be doing. This page will help you through your first time and will provide a reference for future issues you may be a part of.\n\n\n\n\nCredit: \nOfficial White House Photo\n by Pete Souza\n\n\nFirst Steps regarding Incidents\n#\n\n\n\n\nIf you intend on participating on the incident call you should join both the call (if there is a call), review the associated cards in DoIT, and jump on the corresponding internal Chat channel.\n\n\nMake sure you are in a quiet environment in order to participate on the call. Background noise should be kept to a minimum.\n\n\nKeep your microphone muted until you have something to say.\n\n\nIdentify yourself when you join the call; State your name and the system you are the expert for.\n\n\nSpeak up and speak clearly.\n\n\nBe direct and factual.\n\n\nKeep conversations/discussions short and to the point.\n\n\nBring any concerns to the Team Leader (TL) on the call.\n\n\nRespect time constraints given by the Team Leader.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIncident Call\n\n\nNot all issues start with an incident call. Some issues may be completely automated and available only in DoIT while others may be in the incipient stages and the customer may still be on the phone/internal Chat detailing their issue.\n\n\n\n\nLingo\n#\n\n\nUse clear terminology, and avoid using acronyms or abbreviations during a call. Clear and accurate communication is more important than quick communication.\n\n\n\n\nStandard radio \nvoice procedure\n does not need to be followed on calls. However, you should familiarize yourself with the terms, as you may hear them on a call (or need to use them yourself). The ones in more active use on major incident calls are,\n\n\n\n\nAck/Rog\n - \"I have received and understood\"\n\n\nSay Again\n - \"Repeat your last message\"\n\n\nStandby\n - \"Please wait a moment for the next response\"\n\n\nWilco\n - \"Will comply\"\n\n\n\n\nDo not invent new abbreviations, and always favor being explicit of implicit. It is better to make things clearer than to try and save time by abbreviating, only to have a misunderstanding because others didn't know the abbreviation.\n\n\nThe Team Leader\n#\n\n\nThe Team Leader (TL) is the leader of the incident response process, and is responsible for bringing the incident to resolution. They will announce themselves at the start of the call, and will generally be doing most of the talking.\n\n\n\n\nTL is not available\n\n\nA TL may not be available in which case the incident call will be guided by the senior Sysadmin or SME available.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFollow all instructions from the team leader, without exception.\n\n\nDo not perform any actions unless the team leader has told you to do so.\n\n\nThe team leader will typically poll for any strong objections before performing a large action. This is your time to raise any objections if you have them.\n\n\nOnce the team leader has made a decision, that decision is final and should be followed, even if you disagreed during the poll.\n\n\nAnswer any questions the team leader asks you in a clear and concise way.\n\n\nAnswering that you \"don't know\"somethingisperfectlyacceptable.Donottrytoguess.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTheteamleadermayaskyoutoinvestigatesomethingandgetbacktotheminXminutes.Makesureyouarereadywithananswerwithinthattime.\n\n\nAnsweringthatyouneedmoretimeisperfectlyacceptable,butyouneedtogivetheteamleaderanestimateofhowmuchtime.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nProblems?\n#\n\n\nThere'snoteamleaderonthecall!Idon'tknowwhattodo!\n#\n\n\nAskonthecallifanTLispresent.Ifyouhavenoresponse,tryaskinginourinternalChat.IfthereisnoTLthesysadmincantakeoverthisroletemporarily.\n\n\nThereisnotenoughinformation!\n#\n\n\nThedefinitivesourceofinformationforallissuesisinDoIT.Ifitislackingtheret
"text":"If you intend on participating on the incident call you should join both the call (if there is a call), review the associated cards in DoIT, and jump on the corresponding internal Chat channel. Make sure you are in a quiet environment in order to participate on the call. Background noise should be kept to a minimum. Keep your microphone muted until you have something to say. Identify yourself when you join the call; State your name and the system you are the expert for. Speak up and speak clearly. Be direct and factual. Keep conversations/discussions short and to the point. Bring any concerns to the Team Leader (TL) on the call. Respect time constraints given by the Team Leader. Incident Call Not all issues start with an incident call. Some issues may be completely automated and available only in DoIT while others may be in the incipient stages and the customer may still be on the phone/internal Chat detailing their issue.",
"text":"Use clear terminology, and avoid using acronyms or abbreviations during a call. Clear and accurate communication is more important than quick communication. Standard radio voice procedure does not need to be followed on calls. However, you should familiarize yourself with the terms, as you may hear them on a call (or need to use them yourself). The ones in more active use on major incident calls are, Ack/Rog - \"I have received and understood\" Say Again - \"Repeat your last message\" Standby - \"Please wait a moment for the next response\" Wilco - \"Will comply\" Do not invent new abbreviations, and always favor being explicit of implicit. It is better to make things clearer than to try and save time by abbreviating, only to have a misunderstanding because others didn't know the abbreviation.",
"text":"The Team Leader (TL) is the leader of the incident response process, and is responsible for bringing the incident to resolution. They will announce themselves at the start of the call, and will generally be doing most of the talking. TL is not available A TL may not be available in which case the incident call will be guided by the senior Sysadmin or SME available. Follow all instructions from the team leader, without exception. Do not perform any actions unless the team leader has told you to do so. The team leader will typically poll for any strong objections before performing a large action. This is your time to raise any objections if you have them. Once the team leader has made a decision, that decision is final and should be followed, even if you disagreed during the poll. Answer any questions the team leader asks you in a clear and concise way. Answering that you \"don't know\" something is perfectly acceptable. Do not try to guess. The team leader may ask you to investigate something and get back to them in X minutes. Make sure you are ready with an answer within that time. Answering that you need more time is perfectly acceptable, but you need to give the team leader an estimate of how much time.",
"text":"Ask on the call if an TL is present. If you have no response, try asking in our internal Chat. If there is no TL the sysadmin can take over this role temporarily.",
"text":"The definitive source of information for all issues is in DoIT. If it is lacking there then you need to make a note of it and make sure that whoever created the card understands the importance of complete information in a timely manner. If at any point there is a discrepancy ask the TL or Sysadmins to provide up to date information and update the card/tasks accordingly.",
"text":"Information on what to do during a major incident. See our \nseverity level descriptions\n for what constitutes a major incident.\n\n\n\n\nDocumentation\n\n\nAlways document your activities. Keep a detailed worklog of your actions in DoIT and communicate verbosely in our internal Chat or other channels (email, etc.). \n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n#support\n (on MS Teams/internal Chat)\n\n \nhttp://response.spearhead.systems\n\n \n+40728 005 263\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \nNeed an TL? Use a Sysadmin!\n\n \n\n \n\n \nFor executive summary updates only, join \n#executive-summary-updates\n.\n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSecurity Incident?\n\n\nIf this is a security incident, you should follow the \nSecurity Incident Response\n process.\n\n\n\n\nDon't Panic!\n#\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJoin the incident call and chat (see links above).\n\n\n\n\nAnyone is free to join the call or chat to observe and follow along with the incident.\n\n\nIf you wish to participate however, you should join both. If you can't join the call for some reason, you should have a dedicated proxy for the call. Disjointed discussions in the chat room are ultimately distracting.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFollow along with the call/chat, add any comments you feel are appropriate, but keep the discussion relevant to the problem at hand.\n\n\n\n\nIf you are not an SME, try to filter any discussion through the primary SME for your service. Too many people discussing at once becomes overwhelming, so we try to maintain a hierarchical structure to the call if possible.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFollow instructions from the Team Leader.\n\n\n\n\nIs there no TL on the call?\n\n\nCall them! \n\n\nNever hesitate to call the TL. It's much better to have them and not need them than the other way around.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNot a call?\n\n\nNot all issues begin with a formal call. Some issues are self-explanatory and automatically generated via our monitoring platforms, a customer logging on to our portal, etc. In these scenarios \nDoIT\n is the definitive source. If that is not sufficient ask your TL and Sysadmin.\n\n\n\n\nSteps for the Team Leader\n#\n\n\nResolve the incident as quickly and as safely as possible, use the Sysadmin to assist you. Delegate any tasks to relevant experts at your discretion.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnnounce on the call, in DoIT and in our internal Chat that you are the team leader, who you have designated as sysadmin (usually the backup TL), and scribe/juniors if any.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIdentify if there is an obvious cause to the incident (recent deployment, spike in traffic, etc.), delegate investigation to relevant experts,\n\n\n\n\nUse the service experts on the call to assist in the analysis. They should be able to quickly provide confirmation of the cause, but not always. It's the call of the TL on how to proceed in cases where the cause is not positively known. Confer with service owners and use their knowledge to help you.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIdentify investigation \n repair actions (roll back, rate-limit services, etc) and delegate actions to relevant service experts. Typically something like this (obviously not an exhaustive list),\n\n\n\n\nBad Deployment:\n Roll it back.\n\n\nWeb Application Stuck/Crashed:\n Do a rolling restart.\n\n\nEvent Flood:\n Validate automatic throttling is sufficient, adjust manually if not.\n\n\nData Center Outage:\n Validate automation has removed bad data center. Force it to do so if not.\n\n\nDegraded Service Behavior without load:\n Gather forensic data (heap dumps, etc), and consider doing a rolling restart.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nListen for prompts from your Sysadmin regarding severity escalations, decide whether we need to announce publicly, and instruct customer liaison accordingly.\n\n\n\n\nAnnouncing publicly is at your discretion as TL. If you are unsure, then announce publicly (\"If in doubt, tweet it out\").\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOnceincidenthasrecoveredorisactivelyrecovering,youcanannouncethattheincidentisoverandthatthecallisending.Thisusuallyindicatesthere's
"text":"Join the incident call and chat (see links above). Anyone is free to join the call or chat to observe and follow along with the incident. If you wish to participate however, you should join both. If you can't join the call for some reason, you should have a dedicated proxy for the call. Disjointed discussions in the chat room are ultimately distracting. Follow along with the call/chat, add any comments you feel are appropriate, but keep the discussion relevant to the problem at hand. If you are not an SME, try to filter any discussion through the primary SME for your service. Too many people discussing at once becomes overwhelming, so we try to maintain a hierarchical structure to the call if possible. Follow instructions from the Team Leader. Is there no TL on the call? Call them! Never hesitate to call the TL. It's much better to have them and not need them than the other way around. Not a call? Not all issues begin with a formal call. Some issues are self-explanatory and automatically generated via our monitoring platforms, a customer logging on to our portal, etc. In these scenarios DoIT is the definitive source. If that is not sufficient ask your TL and Sysadmin.",
"text":"Resolve the incident as quickly and as safely as possible, use the Sysadmin to assist you. Delegate any tasks to relevant experts at your discretion. Announce on the call, in DoIT and in our internal Chat that you are the team leader, who you have designated as sysadmin (usually the backup TL), and scribe/juniors if any. Identify if there is an obvious cause to the incident (recent deployment, spike in traffic, etc.), delegate investigation to relevant experts, Use the service experts on the call to assist in the analysis. They should be able to quickly provide confirmation of the cause, but not always. It's the call of the TL on how to proceed in cases where the cause is not positively known. Confer with service owners and use their knowledge to help you. Identify investigation repair actions (roll back, rate-limit services, etc) and delegate actions to relevant service experts. Typically something like this (obviously not an exhaustive list), Bad Deployment: Roll it back. Web Application Stuck/Crashed: Do a rolling restart. Event Flood: Validate automatic throttling is sufficient, adjust manually if not. Data Center Outage: Validate automation has removed bad data center. Force it to do so if not. Degraded Service Behavior without load: Gather forensic data (heap dumps, etc), and consider doing a rolling restart. Listen for prompts from your Sysadmin regarding severity escalations, decide whether we need to announce publicly, and instruct customer liaison accordingly. Announcing publicly is at your discretion as TL. If you are unsure, then announce publicly (\"If in doubt, tweet it out\"). Once incident has recovered or is actively recovering, you can announce that the incident is over and that the call is ending. This usually indicates there's no more productive work to be done for the incident right now. Move the remaining, non-time-critical discussion to our internal Chat. Follow up to ensure the customer liaison wraps up the incident publicly. Identify any post-incident clean-up work. You may need to perform debriefing/analysis of the underlying root cause. (After call ends) Create the post-mortem page from the template, and assign an owner to the post-mortem for the incident. (After call ends) Send out an internal email explaining that we had a major incident, provide a link to the post-mortem.",
"text":"You are there to support the TL in whatever they need. Monitor the status, and notify the TL if/when the incident escalates in severity level. Be prepared to page other people as directed by the Team Leader. Provide regular status updates in our internal Chat (roughly every 30mins) to the executive team, giving an executive summary of the current status. Keep it short and to the point, and use @ . Perform any remediations, checking graphs, analysis or investigating logs unless otherwse delegated by the TL. Follow instructions from the Team Leader.",
"text":"You are there to document the key information from the incident in Slack, DoIT, our WiKi, etc. Update the apropriate channel with who the TL is, who the Sysadmin is, and that you're the scribe (if not already done). e.g. \"TL: Bob Boberson, Sysadmin: Gigi Con, Scribe: Writer Writerson\" You should add notes to the proper channels when significant actions are taken, or findings are determined. You don't need to wait for the TL to direct this - use your own judgment. You should also add TODO notes to the proper channel that indicate follow-ups slated for later. Follow instructions from the Team Leader.",
"text":"You are there to support the team leader in identifying the cause of the incident, suggesting and evaluation repair actions, and following through on the repair actions. Investigate the incident by analyzing any graphs or logs at your disposal. Announce all findings to the incident commander. If you are unsure of the cause, that's fine, state that you are investigating and provide regular updates to the TL. Announce all suggestions for resolution to the team leader, it is their decision on how to proceed, do not follow any actions unless told to do so! Follow instructions from the team leader. (Optional) Once the call is over and post-mortem is created, add any notes you think are relevant to the post-mortem page.",
"text":"Be on stand-by to post public facing messages regarding the incident. You will typically be required to update the status page and to send Tweets or other communications from our various accounts at certain times during the call. Follow instructions from the Team Leader.",
"text":"Team Leader Required\n\n\nAs with all major incidents, security ones will also involve a Team Leader, who will delegate the tasks to relevant resolvers. Tasks may be performed in parallel as assigned by the TL. Contact one at the earliest possible opportunity.\n\n\n\n\nChecklist\n#\n\n\nDetails for each of these items are available in the next section.\n\n\n\n\nStop the attack in progress.\n\n\nCut off the attack vector.\n\n\nAssemble the response team.\n\n\nIsolate affected instances.\n\n\nIdentify timeline of attack.\n\n\nIdentify compromised data.\n\n\nAssess risk to other systems.\n\n\nAssess risk of re-attack.\n\n\nApply additional mitigations, additions to monitoring, etc.\n\n\nForensic analysis of compromised systems.\n\n\nInternal communication.\n\n\nInvolve law enforcement.\n\n\nReach out to external parties that may have been used as vector for attack.\n\n\nExternal communication.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAttack Mitigation\n#\n\n\nStop the attack as quickly as you can, via any means necessary. Shut down servers, network isolate them, turn off a data center if you have to. Some common things to try,\n\n\n\n\nShutdown the instance from the provider console (do not delete or terminate if you can help it, as we'll need to do forensics).\n\n\nIf you happen to be logged into the box you can try to,\n\n\nApply firewall rules to restrict traffic.\n\n\nkill -9\n any active session you think is an attacker.\n\n\nChange root password, and update /etc/shadow to lock out all other users.\n\n\nsudo shutdown now\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCut Off Attack Vector\n#\n\n\nIdentify the likely attack vectors and path/fix them so they cannot be re-exploited immediately after stopping the attack.\n\n\n\n\nIf you suspect a third-party provider is compromised, delete all accounts except your own (and those of others who are physically present) and immediately rotate your password and MFA tokens.\n\n\nDisable/remove ssh keys that do not belong to you and those of others who are physically present.\n\n\nIf you suspect a service application was an attack vector, disable any relevant code paths, or shut down the service entirely.\n\n\n\n\nAssemble Response Team\n#\n\n\nIdentify the key responders for the security incident, and keep them all in the loop. Set up a secure method of communicating all information associated with the incident (internal Chat is one option). Details on the incident (or even the fact that an incident has occurred) should be kept private to the responders until you are confident the attack is not being triggered internally.\n\n\n\n\nThe security and site-reliability teams should usually be involved.\n\n\nA representative for any affected services should be involved.\n\n\nA Team Leader (TL) should be appointed, who will also appoint the usual incident command roles. The incident command team will be responsible for keeping documentation of actions taken, and for notifying internal stakeholders as appropriate.\n\n\nDo not communicate with anyone not on the response team about the incident until forensics has been performed. The attack could be happening internally.\n\n\nGive the project an innocuous codename that can be used for chats/documents so if anyone overhears they don't realize it's a security incident. (e.g. sapphire-unicorn).\n\n\nPrefix all emails, and chat topics with \"Legal Work Project\".\n\n\n\n\nIsolateAffectedInstances\n#\n\n\nAnyinstanceswhichwereaffectedbytheattackshouldbeimmediatelyisolatedfromanyotherinstances.Assoonaspossible,animageofthesystemshouldbetakenandputintoaread-onlycoldstorageforlaterforensicanalysis.\n\n\n\n\nBlacklisttheIPaddressesforanyaffectedinstancesfromallotherhosts.\n\n\nTurnoffandshutdowntheinstancesimmediatelyifyoudidn'tdothattostoptheattack.\n\n\nTakeadiskimageforanydisksattachedtotheinstances,andshipthemtoanoff-sitecoldstoragelocation.Youshouldmakesuretheseimagesareread-onlyandcannotbetamperedwith.\n\n\n\n\nIdentifyTimelineofAttack\n#\n\n\nWorkwithalltoolsatyourdispos
"text":"Details for each of these items are available in the next section. Stop the attack in progress. Cut off the attack vector. Assemble the response team. Isolate affected instances. Identify timeline of attack. Identify compromised data. Assess risk to other systems. Assess risk of re-attack. Apply additional mitigations, additions to monitoring, etc. Forensic analysis of compromised systems. Internal communication. Involve law enforcement. Reach out to external parties that may have been used as vector for attack. External communication.",
"text":"Stop the attack as quickly as you can, via any means necessary. Shut down servers, network isolate them, turn off a data center if you have to. Some common things to try, Shutdown the instance from the provider console (do not delete or terminate if you can help it, as we'll need to do forensics). If you happen to be logged into the box you can try to, Apply firewall rules to restrict traffic. kill -9 any active session you think is an attacker. Change root password, and update /etc/shadow to lock out all other users. sudo shutdown now",
"text":"Identify the likely attack vectors and path/fix them so they cannot be re-exploited immediately after stopping the attack. If you suspect a third-party provider is compromised, delete all accounts except your own (and those of others who are physically present) and immediately rotate your password and MFA tokens. Disable/remove ssh keys that do not belong to you and those of others who are physically present. If you suspect a service application was an attack vector, disable any relevant code paths, or shut down the service entirely.",
"text":"Identify the key responders for the security incident, and keep them all in the loop. Set up a secure method of communicating all information associated with the incident (internal Chat is one option). Details on the incident (or even the fact that an incident has occurred) should be kept private to the responders until you are confident the attack is not being triggered internally. The security and site-reliability teams should usually be involved. A representative for any affected services should be involved. A Team Leader (TL) should be appointed, who will also appoint the usual incident command roles. The incident command team will be responsible for keeping documentation of actions taken, and for notifying internal stakeholders as appropriate. Do not communicate with anyone not on the response team about the incident until forensics has been performed. The attack could be happening internally. Give the project an innocuous codename that can be used for chats/documents so if anyone overhears they don't realize it's a security incident. (e.g. sapphire-unicorn). Prefix all emails, and chat topics with \"Legal Work Project\".",
"text":"Any instances which were affected by the attack should be immediately isolated from any other instances. As soon as possible, an image of the system should be taken and put into a read-only cold storage for later forensic analysis. Blacklist the IP addresses for any affected instances from all other hosts. Turn off and shutdown the instances immediately if you didn't do that to stop the attack. Take a disk image for any disks attached to the instances, and ship them to an off-site cold storage location. You should make sure these images are read-only and cannot be tampered with.",
"text":"Work with all tools at your disposal to identify the timeline of the attack, along with exactly what the attacker did. Any reconnaissance the attacker performed on the system before the attack started. When the attacker gained access to the system. What actions the attacker performed on the system, and when. Identify how long the attacker had access to the system before they were detected, and before they were kicked out. Identify any queries the attacker ran on databases. Try to identify if the attacker still has access to the system via another back door. Monitor logs for unusual activity, etc.",
"text":"Using forensic analysis of log files, time-series graphs, and any other information/tools at your disposal, attempt to identify what information was compromised (if any), Identify any data that was compromised during the attack. Was any data exfiltrated from a database? What keys were on the system that are now considering compromised? Was the attacker able to identify other components of the system (map out the network, etc). Find exactly what customer data has been compromised, if any.",
"text":"Based on the data that was compromised, assess the risk to other systems. Does the attacker have enough information to find another way in? Were any passwords or keys stored on the host? If so, they should be considered compromised, regardless of how they were stored. Any user accounts that were used in the initial attack should rotate all of their keys and passwords on every other system they have an account.",
"text":"Start applying mitigations to other parts of your system. Rotate any compromised data. Identify any new alerting which is needed to notify of a similar breach. Block any IP addresses associated with the attack. Identify any keys/credentials that are compromised and revoke their access immediately.",
"text":"Once you are confident the systems are secured, and enough monitoring is in place to detect another attack, you can move onto the forensic analysis stage. Take any read-only images you created, any access logs you have, and comb through them for more information about the attack. Identify exactly what happened, how it happened, and how to prevent it in future. Keep track of all IP addresses involved in the attack. Monitor logs for any attempt to regain access to the system by the attacker.",
"text":"Delegate to: CTO, GM Communicate internally only once you are confident (via forensic analysis) that the attack was not sourced internally. Don't go into too much detail. Overview the timeline. Discuss mitigation steps taken. Follow up with more information once it is known.",
"text":"Delegate to: CTO, GM Work with law enforcement to identify the source of the attack, letting any system owners know that systems under their control may be compromised, etc. Contact local law enforcement. Contact FBI. Contact operators for any systems used in the attack, their systems may also have been compromised. Contact security companies to help in assessing risk and any PR next steps.",
"text":"Delegate to: TL, PR/Marketing Once you have validated all of the information you have is accurate, have a timeline of events, and know exactly what information was compromised, how it was compromised, and sure that it won't happen again. Only then should you prepare and release a public statement to customers informing them of the compromised information and any steps they need to take. Include the date in the title of any announcement, so that it's never confused for a potential new breach. Don't say \"We take security very seriously\". It makes everyone cringe when they read it. Be honest, accept responsibility, and present the facts, along with exactly how we plan to prevent such things in future. Be as detailed as possible with the timeline. Be as detailed as possible in what information was compromised, and how it affects customers. If we were storing something we shouldn't have been, be honest about it. It'll come out later and it'll be much worse. Don't name and shame any external parties that might have caused the compromise. It's bad form. (Unless they've already publicly disclosed, in which case we can link to their disclosure). Release the external communication as soon as possible, preferably within a few days of the compromise. The longer we wait, the worse it will be. Figure out if there is a way to get in touch with customers' internal security teams before the general public notice is sent.",
"text":"Computer Security Incident Handling Guide (NIST) Incident Handler's Handbook (SANS) Responding to IT Security Incidents (Microsoft) Defining Incident Management Processes for CSIRTs: A Work in Progress (CMU) Creating and Managing Computer Security Incident Handling Teams (CSIRTS) (CERT) Google Infrastructure Security Design Overview (Google)",
"text":"For every major issue (SR/IN +major), we need to follow up with a post-mortem. A blame-free, detailed description, of exactly what went wrong in order to cause the incident, along with a list of steps to take in order to prevent a similar incident from occurring again in the future. The incident response process itself should also be included.\n\n\n\n\nOwner Designation\n#\n\n\nThe first step is that a post-mortem owner will be designated. This is done by the TL either at the end of a major incident call, or very shortly after. You will be notified directly by the TL if you are the owner for the post-mortem. The owner is responsible for populating the post-mortem page, looking up logs, managing the followup investigation, and keeping all interested parties in the loop. Please use DoIT and our internal Chat for coordinating followup. A detailed list of the steps is available below,\n\n\nOwner Responsibilities\n#\n\n\nAs owner of a post-mortem, you are responsible for the following,\n\n\n\n\nScheduling the post-mortem meeting (on a shared calendar) and inviting the relevant people (this should be scheduled within 5 business days of the incident).\n\n\nUpdating the page with all of the necessary content.\n\n\nInvestigating the incident, pulling in whomever you need from other teams to assist in the investigation.\n\n\nCreating follow-up DoIT cards (\nYou are only responsible for creating the cards, not following them up to resolution\n).\n\n\nRunning the post-mortem meeting (\nthese generally run themselves, but you should get people back on topic if the conversation starts to wander\n).\n\n\nIn cases where we need a public blog post, creating \n reviewing it with appropriate parties.\n\n\n\n\nPost-Mortem Wiki Page\n#\n\n\nOnce you've been designated as the owner of a post-mortem, you should start updating the page with all the relevant information.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n(If not already done by the TL) Create a new post-mortem page for the incident.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSchedule a post-mortem meeting for within 5 business days of the incident. You should schedule this before filling in the page, just so it's on the calendar.\n\n\n\n\nCreate the meeting on the \"Incident Post-Mortem Meetings\"sharedcalendar.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBeginpopulatingthepagewithalloftheinformationyouhave.\n\n\n\n\nThetimelineshouldbethemainfocustobeginwith.\n\n\nThetimelineshouldincludeimportantchangesinstatus/impact,andalsokeyactionstakenbyresponders.\n\n\nYoushouldmarkthestartoftheincidentinred,andtheresolutioningreen(forwhenwewentinto/outofSR/IN+major).\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGothroughthehistoryinDoITandSlacktoidentifytheresponders,andaddthemtothepage.\n\n\nIdentifytheTeamLeaderandScribeinthislist.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPopulatethepagewithmoredetailedinformation.\n\n\n\n\nForeachiteminthetimeline,identifyametric,orsomethird-partypagewherethedatacamefrom.ThiscouldbealinktoaCheck_MKgraph,alogwatchsearch,aTweet,etc.Anythingwhichshowsthedatapointyou'retryingtoillustrateinthetimeline.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPerformananalysisoftheincident.\n\n\n\n\nCaptureallavailabledataregardingtheincident.Whatcausedit,howmanycustomerswereaffected,etc.\n\n\nAnycommandsorqueriesyouusetolookupdatashouldbepostedinthepagesootherscanseehowthedatawasgathered.\n\n\nCapturetheimpacttocustomers(generallyintermsofeventsubmission,delayedprocessing,andslownotificationdelivery)\n\n\nIdentifytheunderlyingcauseoftheincident(Whathappened,andwhydidithappen).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCreateanyfollowupactionDoITcards(ornotedowntopicsfordiscussionifweneedtodecideonadirectiontogobeforecreatingtickets),\n\n\n\n\nGothroughthehistoryinDoIT,SlacktoidentifyanyTODOitems.\n\n\nLabelallticketswiththeirseveritylevelanddatetags.\n\n\nAnyactionswhichcanreducere-occurrenceoftheincident.\n\n\n(Theremaybesometrade-offhere,andthat'sfine.SometimestheROIisn'
"text":"The first step is that a post-mortem owner will be designated. This is done by the TL either at the end of a major incident call, or very shortly after. You will be notified directly by the TL if you are the owner for the post-mortem. The owner is responsible for populating the post-mortem page, looking up logs, managing the followup investigation, and keeping all interested parties in the loop. Please use DoIT and our internal Chat for coordinating followup. A detailed list of the steps is available below,",
"text":"As owner of a post-mortem, you are responsible for the following, Scheduling the post-mortem meeting (on a shared calendar) and inviting the relevant people (this should be scheduled within 5 business days of the incident). Updating the page with all of the necessary content. Investigating the incident, pulling in whomever you need from other teams to assist in the investigation. Creating follow-up DoIT cards ( You are only responsible for creating the cards, not following them up to resolution ). Running the post-mortem meeting ( these generally run themselves, but you should get people back on topic if the conversation starts to wander ). In cases where we need a public blog post, creating reviewing it with appropriate parties.",
"text":"Once you've been designated as the owner of a post-mortem, you should start updating the page with all the relevant information. (If not already done by the TL) Create a new post-mortem page for the incident. Schedule a post-mortem meeting for within 5 business days of the incident. You should schedule this before filling in the page, just so it's on the calendar. Create the meeting on the \"Incident Post-Mortem Meetings\" shared calendar. Begin populating the page with all of the information you have. The timeline should be the main focus to begin with. The timeline should include important changes in status/impact, and also key actions taken by responders. You should mark the start of the incident in red, and the resolution in green (for when we went into/out of SR/IN +major). Go through the history in DoIT and Slack to identify the responders, and add them to the page. Identify the Team Leader and Scribe in this list. Populate the page with more detailed information. For each item in the timeline, identify a metric, or some third-party page where the data came from. This could be a link to a Check_MK graph, a logwatch search, a Tweet, etc. Anything which shows the data point you're trying to illustrate in the timeline. Perform an analysis of the incident. Capture all available data regarding the incident. What caused it, how many customers were affected, etc. Any commands or queries you use to look up data should be posted in the page so others can see how the data was gathered. Capture the impact to customers (generally in terms of event submission, delayed processing, and slow notification delivery) Identify the underlying cause of the incident (What happened, and why did it happen). Create any followup action DoIT cards (or note down topics for discussion if we need to decide on a direction to go before creating tickets), Go through the history in DoIT, Slack to identify any TODO items. Label all tickets with their severity level and date tags. Any actions which can reduce re-occurrence of the incident. (There may be some trade-off here, and that's fine. Sometimes the ROI isn't worth the effort that would go into it). Identify any actions which can make our incident response process better. Be careful with creating too many cards. Generally we only want to create things that are of top priority. Things that absolutely should be dealt with. Write the external message that will be sent to customers. This will be reviewed during the post-mortem meeting before it is sent out. Avoid using the word \"outage\" unless it really was a full outage, use the word \"incident\" instead. Customers generally see \"outage\" and assume everything was down, when in reality it was likely just some alerts delivered outside of SLA. Look at other examples of previous post-mortems to see the kind of thing you should send.",
"text":"These meetings should generally last 15-30 minutes, and are intended to be a wrap up of the post-mortem process. We should discuss what happened, what we could've done better, and any followup actions we need to take. The goal is to suss out any disagreement on the facts, analysis, or recommended actions, and to get some wider awareness of the problems that are causing reliability issues for us. You should invite the following people to the post-mortem meeting, Always The team leader. Service owners involved in the incident. Key engineer(s)/responders involved in the incident. Optional Customer liaison. (Only SR/IN +major incidents) A general agenda for the meeting would be something like, Recap the timeline, to make sure everyone agrees and is on the same page. Recap important points, and any unusual items. Discuss how the problem could've been caught. Did it send any weak signals? Could it have been caught in tests, or loadtest environment? Discuss customer impact. Any comments from customers, etc. Review action items that have been created, discuss if appropriate, or if more are needed, etc.",
"text":"Here are some examples of post-mortems from other companies as a reference, Stripe LastPass AWS Twilio Heroku Netflix GOV.UK Rail Accident Investigation A List of Post-mortems!",
"text":"This is a standard template for post-mortems. Each section describes the type of information you will want to put in that section.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGuidelines\n\n\nThis page is intended to be reviewed during a post-mortem meeting that should be scheduled within 5 business days of any event.\nYour first step should be to schedule the post-mortem meeting in the shared calendar for within 5 business days after the incident.\nDon't wait until you've filled in the info to schedule the meeting, however make sure the page is completed by the meeting.\n\n\n\n\n Post-Mortem Owner:\n \nYour name goes here.\n\n\n Meeting Scheduled For:\n \nSchedule the meeting on the \"Incident Post-Mortem Meetings\" shared calendar, for within 5 business days after the incident. Put the date/time here.\n\n\n Call Recording:\n \nLink to the incident call recording / slack transcript or DoIT card.\n\n\nOverview\n#\n\n\nInclude a \nshort\n sentence or two summarizing the root cause, timeline summary, and the impact. E.g. \"On the morning of August 99th, we suffered a 1 minute IN-3 due to a runaway process on our primary database machine. This slowness caused roughly 0.024% of alerts that had begun during this time to be delivered out of SLA.\"\n\n\nWhat Happened\n#\n\n\nInclude a short description of what happened.\n\n\nRoot Cause\n#\n\n\nInclude a description of the root cause. If there were any actions taken that exacerbated the issue, also include them here with the intention of learning from any mistakes made during the resolution process.\n\n\nResolution\n#\n\n\nInclude a description what solved the problem. If there was a temporary fix in place, describe that along with the long-term solution.\n\n\nImpact\n#\n\n\nBe very specific here, include exact numbers.\n\n\n| Time in SR-3 | ?mins |\n| Time in IN-3 | ?mins |\n| Notifications Delivered out of SLA | ??% (?? of ??) |\n| Events Dropped / Not Accepted | ??% (?? of ??) \nShould usually be 0, but always check\n |\n| Accounts Affected | ?? |\n| Users Affected | ?? |\n| Support Requests Raised | ?? \nInclude any relevant links to tickets\n |\n\n\nResponders\n#\n\n\n\n\nWho was the TL?\n\n\nWho was the scribe?\n\n\nWho else was involved?\n\n\nWho else was involved?\n\n\n\n\nTimeline\n#\n\n\nSome important times to include: (1) time the root cause began, (2) time of the page, (3) time that the status page was updated (i.e. when the incident became public), (4) time of any significant actions, (5) time the IN-3 ended, (6) links to tools/logs that show how the timestamp was arrived at.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTime (UTC)\n\n\nEvent\n\n\nData Link\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow'd We Do?\n#\n\n\nWhat Went Well?\n#\n\n\n\n\nList anything you did well and want to call out. It's OK to not list anything.\n\n\n\n\nWhat Didn't Go So Well?\n#\n\n\n\n\nList anything you think we didn't do very well. The intent is that we should follow up on all points here to improve our processes.\n\n\n\n\nAction Items\n#\n\n\nEach action item should be in the form of a DoIT card respectiv GTD next actions principle: \"aclearandconcisesingleactiontomovethingsforward\u201d.Includeactionitemssuchas:(1)anyfixesrequiredtopreventtherootcauseinthefuture,(2)anypreparednesstasksthatcouldhelpmitigatetheproblemifitcameupagain,(3)remainingpost-mortemsteps,suchastheinternalemail,aswellasthestatus-pagepublicpost,(4)anyimprovementstoourincidentresponseprocess.\n\n\nMessaging\n#\n\n\nInternalEmail\n#\n\n\nThisisafollow-upforemployees.Itshouldbesentoutrightafterthepost-mortemmeetingisover.Itonlyneedsashortparagraphsummarizingtheincidentandalinktothiswikipage.\n\n\n\n\nBrieflysummarizewhathappenedandwherethepost-mortempage(thispage)canbefound.\n\n\n\n\nExternalMessage\n#\n\n\nThisiswhatwillbeincludedonthepublicfacingstatuswebsite(status.spearhead.systems)regardingthisincident.Whatarewetellingcustomers,includinganapology?(Theapologyshouldbegenuine,notrote.)\n\n\n\n\nSummary\n\n\nWhatHappened?\n\n\n
"text":"Include a short sentence or two summarizing the root cause, timeline summary, and the impact. E.g. \"On the morning of August 99th, we suffered a 1 minute IN-3 due to a runaway process on our primary database machine. This slowness caused roughly 0.024% of alerts that had begun during this time to be delivered out of SLA.\"",
"text":"Include a description of the root cause. If there were any actions taken that exacerbated the issue, also include them here with the intention of learning from any mistakes made during the resolution process.",
"text":"Be very specific here, include exact numbers. | Time in SR-3 | ?mins |\n| Time in IN-3 | ?mins |\n| Notifications Delivered out of SLA | ??% (?? of ??) |\n| Events Dropped / Not Accepted | ??% (?? of ??) Should usually be 0, but always check |\n| Accounts Affected | ?? |\n| Users Affected | ?? |\n| Support Requests Raised | ?? Include any relevant links to tickets |",
"text":"Some important times to include: (1) time the root cause began, (2) time of the page, (3) time that the status page was updated (i.e. when the incident became public), (4) time of any significant actions, (5) time the IN-3 ended, (6) links to tools/logs that show how the timestamp was arrived at. Time (UTC) Event Data Link",
"text":"Each action item should be in the form of a DoIT card respectiv GTD next actions principle: \"a clear and concise single action to move things forward\u201d. Include action items such as: (1) any fixes required to prevent the root cause in the future, (2) any preparedness tasks that could help mitigate the problem if it came up again, (3) remaining post-mortem steps, such as the internal email, as well as the status-page public post, (4) any improvements to our incident response process.",
"text":"This is a follow-up for employees. It should be sent out right after the post-mortem meeting is over. It only needs a short paragraph summarizing the incident and a link to this wiki page. Briefly summarize what happened and where the post-mortem page (this page) can be found.",
"text":"This is what will be included on the public facing status website (status.spearhead.systems) regarding this incident. What are we telling customers, including an apology? (The apology should be genuine, not rote.) Summary What Happened? What Are We Doing About This?",
"title":"External Message"
},
{
"location":"/training/overview/",
"text":"Learning about the Spearhead Systems incident response process is an important part of being an effective member of the Spearhead Systems team. This section goes over our training material for the various roles that are involved in our incident response, along with some additional information and training material from government agencies.\n\n\nTraining Guides\n#\n\n\nOur training guides are split up by role, however you are encouraged to read through the training guides even for roles you don't belong to, as it can give you some good insight into how those people will be behaving during major incidents.\n\n\n\n\nTeam Leader Training\n - The \"TL\" is the person who drives a major incident to resolution. They're the person who will be directing everyone else.\n\n\nSysadmin Training\n - The Sysadmin is someone who supports the Team Leader and can take over for them if necessary.\n\n\nScribe Training\n - This is intended for individuals who will be acting as a scribe during an incident.\n\n\nSME / Resolver Training\n - This is relevant to everyone at Spearhead Systems who are on-call for any team or during projects.\n\n\n\n\nNational Incident Management System (NIMS)\n#\n\n\nOur incident response process is loosely based on the \nUS National Incident Management System (NIMS)\n, which is described as,\n\n\nA systematic, proactive approach to guide departments and agencies at all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to work together seamlessly and manage incidents involving all threats and hazards\u2014regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity\u2014in order to reduce loss of life, property and harm to the environment.\n\n\nWhile it might not initially seem that this would be applicable to an IT operations environment, we've found that many of the lessons learned from major incidents in these situations can be directly applied to our industry too. The principles are the same and span many different environments.\n\n\n \n\n\nIf you want to learn more about NIMS, we recommend the \nICS-100\n and \nICS-700\n online training courses, which go over NIMS and the Incident Command System (You can also take an online examination after training in order to get a certificate from FEMA). There is also a wealth of \nadditional training material and courses from FEMA\n on NIMS, which I would encourage you to look at.\n\n\nMany cities offer CERT training, after which you can volunteer as a CERT contributor within your community. Not only is it an opportunity to get real world experience with disaster response, but the skills you learn can be applied to everyday life too.\n\n\nAlso take a look at the \nAdditional Reading\n section on the home page.",
"title":"Overview"
},
{
"location":"/training/overview/#training-guides",
"text":"Our training guides are split up by role, however you are encouraged to read through the training guides even for roles you don't belong to, as it can give you some good insight into how those people will be behaving during major incidents. Team Leader Training - The \"TL\" is the person who drives a major incident to resolution. They're the person who will be directing everyone else. Sysadmin Training - The Sysadmin is someone who supports the Team Leader and can take over for them if necessary. Scribe Training - This is intended for individuals who will be acting as a scribe during an incident. SME / Resolver Training - This is relevant to everyone at Spearhead Systems who are on-call for any team or during projects.",
"text":"Our incident response process is loosely based on the US National Incident Management System (NIMS) , which is described as, A systematic, proactive approach to guide departments and agencies at all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to work together seamlessly and manage incidents involving all threats and hazards\u2014regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity\u2014in order to reduce loss of life, property and harm to the environment. While it might not initially seem that this would be applicable to an IT operations environment, we've found that many of the lessons learned from major incidents in these situations can be directly applied to our industry too. The principles are the same and span many different environments. If you want to learn more about NIMS, we recommend the ICS-100 and ICS-700 online training courses, which go over NIMS and the Incident Command System (You can also take an online examination after training in order to get a certificate from FEMA). There is also a wealth of additional training material and courses from FEMA on NIMS, which I would encourage you to look at. Many cities offer CERT training, after which you can volunteer as a CERT contributor within your community. Not only is it an opportunity to get real world experience with disaster response, but the skills you learn can be applied to everyday life too. Also take a look at the Additional Reading section on the home page.",
"title":"National Incident Management System (NIMS)"
},
{
"location":"/training/team_leader/",
"text":"So you want to be a team leader? You've come to the right place! You don't need to be a senior team member to become a TL, anyone can do it providing you have the requisite knowledge (yes, even an intern)!\n\n\n\n\nCredit: \nNASA\n\n\nPurpose\n#\n\n\nIf you could boil down the definition of an Team Leader to one sentence, it would be,\n\n\n\n\nTake whatever actions are necessary to deliver projects and resolve issues for Spearhead Systems and customers.\n\n\n\n\nThe purpose of the Team Leader is to be the decision maker during an major incident; Delegating tasks and listening to input from subject matter experts in order to bring the incident to resolution.\n\n\nThe Team Leader becomes the highest ranking individual on any major incident call, regardless of their day-to-day rank. Their decisions made as commander are final.\n\n\nYour job as an TL is to listen to the call, closely monitor and update DoIT and to watch the incident Slack room in order to provide clear coordination, recruiting others to gather context/details. \nYou should not be performing any actions or remediations, checking graphs, or investigating logs.\n Those tasks should be delegated.\n\n\nPrerequisites\n#\n\n\nBefore you can be an Team Leader, it is expected that you meet the following criteria. Don't worry if you don't meet them all yet, you can still continue with training!\n\n\n\n\nHas \nexcellent knowledge of the systems we work with\n and is able to quickly evaluate good vs bad options, and quickly identify what's actually going on.\n\n\nBeen at Spearhead Systems for at least 6 months and has a \nsolid understanding of the incident notification pipeline, automations and web stack\n.\n\n\nExcellent verbal and written \ncommunication skills\n.\n\n\nHas \nknowledge of obscure Spearhead terms\n.\n\n\nHas gravitas and is \nwilling to kick people off a call\n to remove distractions, even if it's the CEO.\n\n\n\n\nResponsibilities\n#\n\n\nRead up on our \nDifferent Roles for Incidents\n to see what is expected from a Team Leader, as well as what we expect from the other roles you'll be interacting with.\n\n\nQualities\n#\n\n\nSome qualities we expect from an effective leader include being able to:\n\n\n\n\nTake command.\n\n\nMotivate responders.\n\n\nCommunicate clear directions.\n\n\nSize up the situation and make rapid decisions.\n\n\nAssess the effectiveness of tactics/strategies.\n\n\nBe flexible and modify your plans as necessary.\n\n\n\n\nAs a leader, you should try to:\n\n\n\n\nBe proficient in your job.\n\n\nMake sound and timely decisions.\n\n\nEnsure tasks are understood.\n\n\nBe prepared to step out of a tactical role to assume a leadership role.\n\n\n\n\nTraining Process\n#\n\n\nThe process is fairly loose for now. Here's a list of things you can do to train though,\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead the rest of this page, particularly the sections below.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nParticipate in \nDefinition of Done\n (DoD).\n\n\n\n\nShadow a DoD to see how it's run.\n\n\nBe the scribe for multiple DoD's.\n\n\nBe the team leader for multiple DoD's.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPlay a game of \"\nKeep Talking and Nobody Explodes\n\"withotherpeopleintheoffice.\n\n\n\n\nForamorerealisticexperience,playitwithsomeoneinadifferentofficeoverHangouts.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShadowacurrentteamleaderforatleastafullweekshift.\n\n\n\n\nGetalertedwhentheydo,joininonthesamecalls.\n\n\nSitinonanactiveincidentcall,followalongwiththechat,andfollowalongwithwhattheTeamLeaderisdoing.\n\n\nDonotactivelyparticipateinthecall,keepyourquestionsuntiltheend.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nReverseshadowacurrentteamleaderforatleastafullweekshift.\n\n\n\n\nYoushouldbetheonetorespondtoincidents,andyouwilltakepointoncalls,howeverthecurrentTLwillbetheretotakeovershouldyounotknowhowtoproceed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGraduation\n#\n\n\nWhat'sthedifferencebetweenanTLintraining,andanTL?(Thisisn'tthesetuptoajoke).Simple,aTLputsthemselvesontheschedule.\n\n\nHandlingIncidents\n#\n\n\
"title":"Team Leader"
},
{
"location":"/training/team_leader/#purpose",
"text":"If you could boil down the definition of an Team Leader to one sentence, it would be, Take whatever actions are necessary to deliver projects and resolve issues for Spearhead Systems and customers. The purpose of the Team Leader is to be the decision maker during an major incident; Delegating tasks and listening to input from subject matter experts in order to bring the incident to resolution. The Team Leader becomes the highest ranking individual on any major incident call, regardless of their day-to-day rank. Their decisions made as commander are final. Your job as an TL is to listen to the call, closely monitor and update DoIT and to watch the incident Slack room in order to provide clear coordination, recruiting others to gather context/details. You should not be performing any actions or remediations, checking graphs, or investigating logs. Those tasks should be delegated.",
"text":"Before you can be an Team Leader, it is expected that you meet the following criteria. Don't worry if you don't meet them all yet, you can still continue with training! Has excellent knowledge of the systems we work with and is able to quickly evaluate good vs bad options, and quickly identify what's actually going on. Been at Spearhead Systems for at least 6 months and has a solid understanding of the incident notification pipeline, automations and web stack . Excellent verbal and written communication skills . Has knowledge of obscure Spearhead terms . Has gravitas and is willing to kick people off a call to remove distractions, even if it's the CEO.",
"text":"Read up on our Different Roles for Incidents to see what is expected from a Team Leader, as well as what we expect from the other roles you'll be interacting with.",
"title":"Responsibilities"
},
{
"location":"/training/team_leader/#qualities",
"text":"Some qualities we expect from an effective leader include being able to: Take command. Motivate responders. Communicate clear directions. Size up the situation and make rapid decisions. Assess the effectiveness of tactics/strategies. Be flexible and modify your plans as necessary. As a leader, you should try to: Be proficient in your job. Make sound and timely decisions. Ensure tasks are understood. Be prepared to step out of a tactical role to assume a leadership role.",
"text":"The process is fairly loose for now. Here's a list of things you can do to train though, Read the rest of this page, particularly the sections below. Participate in Definition of Done (DoD). Shadow a DoD to see how it's run. Be the scribe for multiple DoD's. Be the team leader for multiple DoD's. Play a game of \" Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes \" with other people in the office. For a more realistic experience, play it with someone in a different office over Hangouts. Shadow a current team leader for at least a full week shift. Get alerted when they do, join in on the same calls. Sit in on an active incident call, follow along with the chat, and follow along with what the Team Leader is doing. Do not actively participate in the call, keep your questions until the end. Reverse shadow a current team leader for at least a full week shift. You should be the one to respond to incidents, and you will take point on calls, however the current TL will be there to take over should you not know how to proceed.",
"title":"Training Process"
},
{
"location":"/training/team_leader/#graduation",
"text":"What's the difference between an TL in training, and an TL? (This isn't the set up to a joke). Simple, a TL puts themselves on the schedule.",
"text":"Every incident is different (we're hopefully not repeating the same issue multiple times!), but there's a common process you can apply to each one. Identify the symptoms. Identify what the symptoms are, how big the issue is, and whether it's escalating/flapping/static. Size-up the situation. Gather as much information as you can, as quickly as you can (remember the incident is still happening while you're doing this). Get the facts, the possibilities of what can happen, and the probability of those things happening. Stabilize the incident. Identify actions you can use to proceed. Gather support for the plan (See \"Polling During a Decision\" below). Delegate remediation actions to your SME's. Provide regular updates. Maintain a cadence, and provide regular updates to everyone on the call. What's happening, what are we doing about it, etc.",
"title":"Handling Incidents"
},
{
"location":"/training/team_leader/#sysadmin",
"text":"The sysadmin for an incident is generally the backup Team Leader. However, as a Team Leader, you may appoint one or more Sysadmins. Note that Sysadmins must be as qualified as the Team Leader, and that if a Sysadmin is assigned, he or she must be fully qualified to assume the Team Leaders\u2019s position if required.",
"text":"Sharing information during an incident is a critical process. As a Team Leader (or Sysadmin), you should be prepared to brief others as necessary. You will also be required to communicate your intentions and decisions clearly so that there is no ambiguity in your commands. When given information from a responder, you should clearly acknowledge that you have received and understood their message, so that the responder can be confident in moving on to other tasks. After an incident, you should communicate with other training Team Leader on any debrief actions you feel are necessary.",
"text":"The Steps for Incident Commander provide a detailed description of what you should be doing during an incident. Additionally, aside from following the usual incident call etiquette , there a few extra etiquette guidelines you should follow as TL: Always announce when you join the call if you are the on-call TL. Don't let discussions get out of hand. Keep conversations short. Note objections from others, but your call is final. If anyone is being actively disruptive to your call, kick them off. Announce the end of the call. Here are some examples of phrases and patterns you should use during incident calls.",
"text":"At the start of any major incident call, the incident commander should announce the following, This is [NAME], I am the Team Leader for this call. This establishes to everyone on the call what your name is, and that you are now the commander. You should state \"Team Leader\" and not \"TL\", as newcomers may not be familiar with the terminology yet. The word \"leader\" makes it very clear that you're in charge.",
"text":"If you are trained to be an TL and have joined a call, even if you aren't the TL on-call, you should do the following, Is there a TL on the call? (pause) Hearing no response, this is [NAME], and I am now the Team Leader for this call. If the on-call TL joins later, you may hand over to them at your discretion (see below for the hand-off procedure)",
"text":"During a call, you will want to know who is available from the various teams in order to resolve the incident. Etiquette dictates that people should announce themselves, but sometimes you may be joining late to the call. If you need a representative from a team, just ask on the call. Your deputy can page one if no one answers. Do we have a representative from [X] on the call? (pause) Deputy, can you go ahead and page the [X] on-call please.",
"text":"When you need to give out an assignment or task, give it to a person directly, never say \"can someone do...\" as this leads to the bystander effect . Instead, all actions should be assigned to a specific person, and time-boxed with a specific number of minutes. TL: Bob, please investigate the high latency on web app boxes. I'll come back to you for an answer in 3 minutes. Bob: Understood Keep track of how many minutes you assigned, and check in with that person after that time. You can get help from your deputy to help track the timings.",
"text":"If a decision needs to be made, it comes down to the TL. Once the TL makes a decision, it is final. But it's important that no one can come later and object to the plan, saying things like \"I knew that would happen\". A TL will use very specific language to be sure that doesn't happen. The proposal is to [EXPLAIN PROPOSAL] Are there any strong objections to this plan? (pause) Hearing no objects, we are proceeding with this proposal. If you were to ask \"Does everyone agree?\", you'd get people speaking over each other, you'd have quiet people not speaking up, etc. Asking for any STRONG objections gives people the chance to object, but only if they feel strongly on the matter.",
"text":"It's important to maintain a cadence during a major incident call. Whenever there is a lull in the proceedings, usually because you're waiting for someone to get back to you, you can fill the gap by explaining the current situation and the actions that are outstanding. This makes sure everyone is on the same page. While we wait for [X], here's an update of our current situation. We are currently in a IN-3 situation, we believe to be caused by [X]. There's an open question to [Y] who will be getting back to us in 2 minutes. In the meantime, we have Tweeted out that we are experiencing issues. Our next Tweet will be in 10 minutes if the incident is still ongoing at that time. Are there any additional actions or proposals from anyone else at this time?",
"text":"Transfer of command, involves (as the name suggests) transferring command to another Team Leader or even a Sysadmin. There are multiple reasons why a transfer of command might take place, TL has become fatigued and is unable to continue. Incident complexity changes. Change of command is necessary for effectiveness or efficiency. Personal emergencies arise (e.g., TL has a family emergency). Never feel like you are not doing your job properly by handing over. Handovers are encouraged. In order to handover, out of band from the main call (via Slack for example), notify the other TL that you wish to transfer command. Update them with anything you feel appropriate. Then announce on the call, Everyone on the call, be advised, at this time I am handing over command to [X]. The new TL should then announce on the call as if they were joining a new call (see above), so that everyone is aware of the new commander. Note that the arrival of a more qualified person does NOT necessarily mean a change in incident command.",
"text":"Often times on a call people will be talking over one another, or an argument on the correct way to proceed may break out. As Team Leader it's important that order is maintained on a call. The ITeam Leader has the power to remove someone from the call if necessary (even if it's the CEO). But often times you just need to remind people to speak one at a time. Sometimes the discussion can be healthy even if it starts as an argument, but you shouldn't let it go on for too long. (noise) Ok everyone, can we all speak one at a time please. So far I'm hearing two options to proceed: 1) [X], 2) [Y]. Are there any other proposals someone would like to make at this time? ...etc",
"text":"You may ask a question as TL and receive an answer that doesn't actually answer your question. This is generally when you ask for a yes/no answer but get a more detailed explanation. This can often times be because the person doesn't understand the call etiquette. But if it continues, you need to take action in order to proceed. TL: Is this going to disable the service for everyone? SME: Well... for some people it.... TL: Stop. I need a yes/no answer. Is this going to disable the service for everyone? SME: Well... it might not do... TL: Stop. I'm going to ask again, and the only two words I want to hear from you are \"yes\" or \"no. If this going to disable the service for everyone? SME: Well.. like I was saying.. TL: Stop. Leave the call. Backup TL can you please page the backup on-call for [service] so that we can get an answer.",
"text":"You may get someone who would be senior to you during peacetime come on the call and start overriding your decisions as TL. This is unacceptable behaviour during wartime, as the TL is in command. While this is rare, you can get things back on track with the following, Executive: No, I don't want us doing that. Everyone stop. We need to rollback instead. TL: Hold please. [EXECUTIVE], do you wish to take over command? Executive: Yes/No (If yes) TL: Understood. Everyone on the call, be advised, at this time I am handling over command to [EXECUTIVE]. They are now the team leader for this call. (If no) TL: In that case, please cause no further interruptions or I will remove you from the call. This makes it clear to the executive that they have the option of being in charge and making decisions, but in order to do so they must continue as an Team Leader. If they refuse, then remind them that you are in charge and disruptive interruptions will not be tolerated. If they continue, remove them from the call.",
"text":"At the end of an incident, you should announce to everyone on the call that you are ending the call at this time, and provide information on where followup discussion can take place. It's also customary to thank everyone. Ok everyone, we're ending the call at this time. Please continue any followup discussion in DoIT and on Slack. Thanks everyone.",
"text":"Spearhead Systems employees have access to almost all previous incident calls, and can listen/read them at their discretion. Here are some short examples from popular culture to show the techniques at work. Here's a clip from the movie Apollo 13, where Gene Kranz (Flight Director / Incident Commander) shows some great examples of Incident Command. Here are some things to note: Walks into the room, and immediately obvious that he's the TL. Calms the noise, and makes sure everyone is paying attention. Provides a status update so people are aware of the situation. Projector breaks, doesn't get sidetracked on fixing it, just moves on to something else. Provides a proposal for how to proceed and elicits feedback. Listens to the feedback calmly. When counter-proposal is raised, states that he agrees and why. Allows a discussion to happen, listens to all points. When discussion gets out of hand, re-asserts command of the situation. Explains his decision, and why. Explains his full plan and decision, so everyone is on the same page. Another clip from Apollo 13. Things to note: Summarizes the situation, and states the facts. Listens to the feedback from various people. When a trusted SME provides information counter to what everyone else is saying, asks for additional clarification (\"What do you mean, everything?\") Wise cracking remarks are not acknowledged by the TL (\"You can't run a vacuum cleaner on 12 amps!\") \"That's the deal?\".. \"That's the deal\". Once decision is made, moves on to the next discussion. Delegates tasks.",
"title":"Examples From Pop Culture"
},
{
"location":"/training/sysadmin/",
"text":"So you want to be a Sysadmin? You've come to the right place!\n\n\n\n\nCredit: \noregondot @ Flickr\n\n\nPurpose\n#\n\n\nThe purpose of the Sysadmin is to support the TL by keeping track of timers, notifying the TL of important information, and paging other people as directed by the TL.\n\n\nIt's important for the TL to focus on the problem at hand, rather than worrying about monitoring timers. The deputy is there to help support the TL and keep them focussed on the incident.\n\n\nAs a Sysadmin, you will be expected to take over command from the TL if they request it.\n\n\nYou should be performing any remediations, checking graphs, or investigating logs\n unless otherwise delegated by the TL.\n\n\nPrerequisites\n#\n\n\nBefore you can be a Sysadmin, it is expected that you meet the following criteria. Don't worry if you don't meet them all yet, you can still continue with training!\n\n\n\n\nBe trained as an \nTeam Leader\n.\n\n\n\n\nResponsibilities\n#\n\n\nRead up on our \nDifferent Roles for Incidents\n to see what is expected from a Sysadmin, as well as what we expect from the other roles you'll be interacting with.\n\n\nTraining Process\n#\n\n\nThe training process for a Sysadmin is quite simple.\n\n\n\n\nFollow our \nTeam Leader Training\n.\n\n\nRead this page.\n\n\n\n\nIncident Call Procedures and Lingo\n#\n\n\nThe \nSteps for Sysadmin\n provide a detailed description of what you should be doing during an incident.\n\n\nHere are some examples of phrases and patterns you should use during incident calls.\n\n\nKeep Track of Responders\n#\n\n\nAs you listen to the call, you should keep track of the responders to the call as you hear them speak. Make a note on a piece of paper and add them to the Watchers in DoIT. The TL may ask you who is on-call for a particular issue, and you should know the answer, and be able to page them.\n\n\n\n\nDo we have a representative from [X] on the call?\n\n\n(pause)\n\n\nSysadmin, can you go ahead and page the [X] on-call please.\n\n\n\n\nYou can page them however you see fit, phone call, etc.\n\n\nProvide Executive Status Updates\n#\n\n\nProvide regular status updates on Slack (roughly every 30mins), giving an executive summary of the current status during IN-3 incidents. Keep it short and to the point, and use @here. Mention the current state, the actions in progress, customer impact, and expected time remaining. It's OK to miss out some of those if the information isn't known.\n\n\n\n\n@here: We are in IN-3 due to X. Current actions in progress are to do Y. Expecting 3 mins to complete that action. Once action is complete, system should recover on its own within 5 minutes.\n\n\n\n\nAlert TL to Timers\n#\n\n\nYou are expected to keep track of how long the incident has been running for, and provide callouts to the TL every 10 minutes so they can take actions such as increasing the severity, or asking Support to Tweet out. This is as simple as telling the TL on the call,\n\n\n\n\nTL, be advised the incident is now at the 10 minute mark.\n\n\n\n\nSimilarly, when the TL asks for someone to get back to them in X minutes, you are expected to keep track of that. You should remind the TL when that time has been reached.\n\n\n\n\nTL, be advised the timer for [TEAM]'s investigation is up.",
"title":"Sysadmin"
},
{
"location":"/training/sysadmin/#purpose",
"text":"The purpose of the Sysadmin is to support the TL by keeping track of timers, notifying the TL of important information, and paging other people as directed by the TL. It's important for the TL to focus on the problem at hand, rather than worrying about monitoring timers. The deputy is there to help support the TL and keep them focussed on the incident. As a Sysadmin, you will be expected to take over command from the TL if they request it. You should be performing any remediations, checking graphs, or investigating logs unless otherwise delegated by the TL.",
"title":"Purpose"
},
{
"location":"/training/sysadmin/#prerequisites",
"text":"Before you can be a Sysadmin, it is expected that you meet the following criteria. Don't worry if you don't meet them all yet, you can still continue with training! Be trained as an Team Leader .",
"text":"Read up on our Different Roles for Incidents to see what is expected from a Sysadmin, as well as what we expect from the other roles you'll be interacting with.",
"text":"The Steps for Sysadmin provide a detailed description of what you should be doing during an incident. Here are some examples of phrases and patterns you should use during incident calls.",
"text":"As you listen to the call, you should keep track of the responders to the call as you hear them speak. Make a note on a piece of paper and add them to the Watchers in DoIT. The TL may ask you who is on-call for a particular issue, and you should know the answer, and be able to page them. Do we have a representative from [X] on the call? (pause) Sysadmin, can you go ahead and page the [X] on-call please. You can page them however you see fit, phone call, etc.",
"text":"Provide regular status updates on Slack (roughly every 30mins), giving an executive summary of the current status during IN-3 incidents. Keep it short and to the point, and use @here. Mention the current state, the actions in progress, customer impact, and expected time remaining. It's OK to miss out some of those if the information isn't known. @here: We are in IN-3 due to X. Current actions in progress are to do Y. Expecting 3 mins to complete that action. Once action is complete, system should recover on its own within 5 minutes.",
"text":"You are expected to keep track of how long the incident has been running for, and provide callouts to the TL every 10 minutes so they can take actions such as increasing the severity, or asking Support to Tweet out. This is as simple as telling the TL on the call, TL, be advised the incident is now at the 10 minute mark. Similarly, when the TL asks for someone to get back to them in X minutes, you are expected to keep track of that. You should remind the TL when that time has been reached. TL, be advised the timer for [TEAM]'s investigation is up.",
"title":"Alert TL to Timers"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/",
"text":"So you want to be a scribe? You've come to the right place! You don't need to be a senior team member to become a deputy or scribe, anyone can do it providing you have the requisite knowledge!\n\n\n\n\nCredit: \nHolly Chaffin\n\n\nPurpose\n#\n\n\nThe purpose of the Scribe is to maintain a timeline of key events during an incident. Documenting actions, and keeping track of any followup items that will need to be addressed.\n\n\nIt's important for the rest of the command staff to be able to focus on the problem at hand, rather than worrying about documenting the steps.\n\n\nYour job as Scribe is to listen to the call and to watch the incident Slack room and DoIT card(s), keeping track of context and actions that need to be performed, documenting these as you go. \nYou should not be performing any remediations, checking graphs, or investigating logs.\n Those tasks will be delegated to the subject matter experts (SME's) by the Team Leader.\n\n\nPrerequisites\n#\n\n\nBefore you can be a Scribe, it is expected that you meet the following criteria. Don't worry if you don't meet them all yet, you can still continue with training!\n\n\n\n\nExcellent verbal and written \ncommunication skills\n.\n\n\nHas \nknowledge of obscure PagerDuty terms\n.\n\n\n\n\nResponsibilities\n#\n\n\nRead up on our \nDifferent Roles for Incidents\n to see what is expected from a Scribe, as well as what we expect from the other roles you'll be interacting with.\n\n\nTraining Process\n#\n\n\nThere is no formal training process for this role, reading this page should be sufficient for most tasks. Here's a list of things you can do to train though,\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead the rest of this page, particularly the sections below.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nParticipate in \nFriday DoD\n (DoD).\n\n\n\n\nShadow a DoD to see how it's run.\n\n\nBe the scribe for multiple DoD's.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nScribing\n#\n\n\nScribing is more art than science. The objective is to keep an accurate record of important events that occurred on the call, so that we can look back at the timeline to see what happened. But what exactly is important? There's no overwhelming answer, and it really comes down the judgement and experience. But here are some general things you most definitely want to capture as scribe.\n\n\n\n\nThe result of any polling decisions.\n\n\n This is not \"9 people voted yay, 3 voted nay\".\n\n\n It is \"Polled for if we should do rolling restart. \n is proceeding with restart.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAny followup items that are called out as \"We should do this..\", \"Why didn't this?..\", etc.\n\n\n This is not \"Why isn't the Support representative on the call?\"\n\n\n This is \"TODO: Why didn't we get paged for this earlier?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIncidentCallProceduresandLingo\n#\n\n\nThe\nStepsforScribe\nprovideadetaileddescriptionofwhatyoushouldbedoingduringanincident.\n\n\nHerearesomeexamplesofphrasesandpatternsyoushoulduseduringincidentcalls.\n\n\nStatusStalking\n#\n\n\nAtthestartofanymajorincidentcall,youshouldstartourstatusstalkingbot,sothatitwillposttotheroomanupdateautomatically.\n\n\n\n\n!statusstalk\n\n\n\n\nThiswillprovidetheupdateandallowtheTLtoseethestatuswithouthavingtokeepasking.\n\n\nNoteImportantActions\n#\n\n\nDuringacall,youwillhearlotsofdiscussionhappening,youshouldnotbedocumentingallofthisinthechatroom.Youonlywanttodocumentthingswhichwillbeimportantforthefinaltimeline.It'snotalwaysobviouswhatthismightbe,andit'susuallyamatterofjudgement.YougenerallywanttonoteanyactionstheTLhasaskedsomeonetoperform,alongwiththeresultofanypollingdecisions.\n\n\n\n\nPolledfordecisiononwhethertoperformrollingrestart.Weareproceedingwithrestart.[USER_A]toexecute.\n\n\n\n\nSomeactionsmightseemimportantatthetime,butendupnotbeing.That'sOK.It'sbettertohavemoreinfothannotenough,butdon'tgooverboard.\n\n\nNoteFollowupActions\n#\n\n\nSometimesduringthecall,someonewilleithermentionso
"title":"Scribe"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/#purpose",
"text":"The purpose of the Scribe is to maintain a timeline of key events during an incident. Documenting actions, and keeping track of any followup items that will need to be addressed. It's important for the rest of the command staff to be able to focus on the problem at hand, rather than worrying about documenting the steps. Your job as Scribe is to listen to the call and to watch the incident Slack room and DoIT card(s), keeping track of context and actions that need to be performed, documenting these as you go. You should not be performing any remediations, checking graphs, or investigating logs. Those tasks will be delegated to the subject matter experts (SME's) by the Team Leader.",
"title":"Purpose"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/#prerequisites",
"text":"Before you can be a Scribe, it is expected that you meet the following criteria. Don't worry if you don't meet them all yet, you can still continue with training! Excellent verbal and written communication skills . Has knowledge of obscure PagerDuty terms .",
"title":"Prerequisites"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/#responsibilities",
"text":"Read up on our Different Roles for Incidents to see what is expected from a Scribe, as well as what we expect from the other roles you'll be interacting with.",
"title":"Responsibilities"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/#training-process",
"text":"There is no formal training process for this role, reading this page should be sufficient for most tasks. Here's a list of things you can do to train though, Read the rest of this page, particularly the sections below. Participate in Friday DoD (DoD). Shadow a DoD to see how it's run. Be the scribe for multiple DoD's.",
"title":"Training Process"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/#scribing",
"text":"Scribing is more art than science. The objective is to keep an accurate record of important events that occurred on the call, so that we can look back at the timeline to see what happened. But what exactly is important? There's no overwhelming answer, and it really comes down the judgement and experience. But here are some general things you most definitely want to capture as scribe. The result of any polling decisions. This is not \"9 people voted yay, 3 voted nay\". It is \"Polled for if we should do rolling restart. is proceeding with restart.\" Any followup items that are called out as \"We should do this..\", \"Why didn't this?..\", etc. This is not \"Why isn't the Support representative on the call?\" This is \"TODO: Why didn't we get paged for this earlier?\"",
"text":"The Steps for Scribe provide a detailed description of what you should be doing during an incident. Here are some examples of phrases and patterns you should use during incident calls.",
"title":"Incident Call Procedures and Lingo"
},
{
"location":"/training/scribe/#status-stalking",
"text":"At the start of any major incident call, you should start our status stalking bot, so that it will post to the room an update automatically. !status stalk This will provide the update and allow the TL to see the status without having to keep asking.",
"text":"During a call, you will hear lots of discussion happening, you should not be documenting all of this in the chat room. You only want to document things which will be important for the final timeline. It's not always obvious what this might be, and it's usually a matter of judgement. You generally want to note any actions the TL has asked someone to perform, along with the result of any polling decisions. Polled for decision on whether to perform rolling restart. We are proceeding with restart. [USER_A] to execute. Some actions might seem important at the time, but end up not being. That's OK. It's better to have more info than not enough, but don't go overboard.",
"text":"Sometimes during the call, someone will either mention something we \"should fix\", or the TL will specifically ask you to note a followup item. You can do this in Slack and DoIT by simply prefixing with \"TODO\", this will make it easier to search for later. TODO: Why did we not get paged for the fall in traffic on [X] cluster? The post-mortem owner will find these after and raise tasks for them.",
"text":"When the TL ends the call, you should post a message into Slack to let everyone know the call is over (and notify customers directly via their preffer communications channel), and that they should continue discussion elsewhere. Call is over, thanks everyone. Follow up in Slack.",
"title":"End of Call Notification"
},
{
"location":"/training/subject_matter_expert/",
"text":"If you are on-call for any team at Spearhead Systems, you may be paged for a major incident and will be expected to respond as a subject matter expert (SME) for your service. This page details everything you need to know in order to be prepared for that responsibility. If you are interested in becoming an Team Leader, take a look at the \nTeam Leader Training page\n.\n\n\n\n\nCredit: \noregondot @ Flickr\n\n\nOn-Call Expectations\n#\n\n\nIf you are on-call for your team, there are certain expectations of you as that on-call. This applies to both the primary and secondary on-calls. Getting paged about a IN-3 or SR-3 in your system comes with different expectations than getting paged with a IN-1.\n\n\nBefore Going On-Call\n#\n\n\n\n\nBe prepared, by having already familiarized yourself with our incident response policies and procedures. In particular,\n\n\nDifferent Roles for Incidents\n - You will be acting as a \"Resolver\" or \"SME\". But you should familiarize yourself with the other roles and what they will be doing.\n\n\nIncident Call Etiquette\n - How to behave during an incident call.\n\n\nDuring an Incident\n - What to do during an incident. You are specifically interested in the \"Resolver\" steps, but you should familiarize yourself with the entire document.\n\n\nGlossary\n - Familiarize yourself with the terminology that may be used during the call.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMake sure you have set up your alerting methods, and that these can bypass your \"Do Not Disturb\" settings.\n\n\nCheck you can join the incident call. You may need to install a browser plugin. You don't want to be doing that the first time you get paged.\n\n\nBe aware of your upcoming on-call time and arrange swaps around travel, vacations, appointments, etc.\n\n\nIf you are an Team Leader, make sure you are not on-call for your team at the same time as being on-call as Team Leader.\n\n\n\n\nDuring On-Call Period\n#\n\n\n\n\nHave your laptop and Internet with you at all times during your on-call period (office, home, a MiFi, a phone with a tethering plan, etc).\n\n\nIf you have important appointments, you need to get someone else on your team to cover that time slot in advance.\n\n\nWhen you receive an alert for a major incident, you are expected to join the incident call and Slack as quickly as possible (within minutes).\n\n\nYou will be asked questions or given actions by the Team Leader. Answer questions concisely, and follow all actions given (even if you disagree with them).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nResponse Mobilization\n#\n\n\nWhen an incident occurs, you must be mobilized or assigned to become part of the incident response. In other words, until you are mobilized to the incident via a page or being directly asked by someone else on the incident, you remain in your everyday role. After being mobilized, your first task is to check in and receive an assignment. While it's tempting to see an incident happening and want to jump in and help, when resources show up that have not been requested, the management of the incident can be compromised.\n\n\n\"Never Hesitate to Escalate\"\n#\n\n\nIf you're not sure about something, it is perfectly acceptable to bring in other SMEs from your team that you believe know a given system better than you. Don't let your ego keep you from bringing in additional help. Our motto is \"Never hesitate to escalate\", you will never be looked down upon for escalating something because you didn't know how to handle it.\n\n\nBlameless\n#\n\n\nThere will be incidents. Some will be caused by you, some will be caused by others... some will just happen. Our entire incident response process is completely blameless. Blaming people is counter productive and just distracts from the problem at hand. No matter how an incident started, they all need to get solved as quickly as possible.\n\n\nWartime vs Peacetime\n#\n\n\nBehavior during a major incident is very different to any other alert you may have received in the past. We call a major incident \"wartime\",andmakeadistinctionbetweenthatandnormaleverydayoperatio
"text":"If you are on-call for your team, there are certain expectations of you as that on-call. This applies to both the primary and secondary on-calls. Getting paged about a IN-3 or SR-3 in your system comes with different expectations than getting paged with a IN-1.",
"text":"Be prepared, by having already familiarized yourself with our incident response policies and procedures. In particular, Different Roles for Incidents - You will be acting as a \"Resolver\" or \"SME\". But you should familiarize yourself with the other roles and what they will be doing. Incident Call Etiquette - How to behave during an incident call. During an Incident - What to do during an incident. You are specifically interested in the \"Resolver\" steps, but you should familiarize yourself with the entire document. Glossary - Familiarize yourself with the terminology that may be used during the call. Make sure you have set up your alerting methods, and that these can bypass your \"Do Not Disturb\" settings. Check you can join the incident call. You may need to install a browser plugin. You don't want to be doing that the first time you get paged. Be aware of your upcoming on-call time and arrange swaps around travel, vacations, appointments, etc. If you are an Team Leader, make sure you are not on-call for your team at the same time as being on-call as Team Leader.",
"text":"Have your laptop and Internet with you at all times during your on-call period (office, home, a MiFi, a phone with a tethering plan, etc). If you have important appointments, you need to get someone else on your team to cover that time slot in advance. When you receive an alert for a major incident, you are expected to join the incident call and Slack as quickly as possible (within minutes). You will be asked questions or given actions by the Team Leader. Answer questions concisely, and follow all actions given (even if you disagree with them).",
"text":"When an incident occurs, you must be mobilized or assigned to become part of the incident response. In other words, until you are mobilized to the incident via a page or being directly asked by someone else on the incident, you remain in your everyday role. After being mobilized, your first task is to check in and receive an assignment. While it's tempting to see an incident happening and want to jump in and help, when resources show up that have not been requested, the management of the incident can be compromised.",
"text":"If you're not sure about something, it is perfectly acceptable to bring in other SMEs from your team that you believe know a given system better than you. Don't let your ego keep you from bringing in additional help. Our motto is \"Never hesitate to escalate\", you will never be looked down upon for escalating something because you didn't know how to handle it.",
"text":"There will be incidents. Some will be caused by you, some will be caused by others... some will just happen. Our entire incident response process is completely blameless. Blaming people is counter productive and just distracts from the problem at hand. No matter how an incident started, they all need to get solved as quickly as possible.",
"text":"Behavior during a major incident is very different to any other alert you may have received in the past. We call a major incident \"wartime\", and make a distinction between that and normal everyday operations (\"peacetime\").",
"text":"The organizational structure is generally based on seniority. The more senior members of a team will lead discussions, and managers or team leads will have the final say. Decisions are made after careful consideration of all options, and to minimize potential risk to customers.",
"text":"Wartime is different, and you will notice on our major incident calls that there's a different organizational structure. The Team Leader is in charge. No matter their rank during peacetime, they are now the highest ranked individual on the call, higher than the CEO. Primary responders (folks acting as primary on-call for a team/service) are the highest ranked individuals for that service. Decisions will be made by the TL after consideration of the information presented. Once that decision is made, it is final. Riskier decisions can be made by the TL than would normally be considered during peacetime. For example, the TL may decide to drop events for a particular customer in order to maintain the integrity of the system for everyone else. The TL may go against a consensus decision. If a poll is done, and 9/10 people agree but 1 disagrees. The TL may choose the disagreement option despite a majority vote. Even if you disagree, the TL's decision is final. During the call is not the time to argue with them. The TL may use language or behave in a way you find rude. This is wartime, and they need to do whatever it takes to resolve the situation, so sometimes rudeness occurs. This is never anything personal, and something you should be prepared to experience if you've never been in a wartime situation before. You may be asked to leave the call by the TL, or you may even be forceable kicked off a call. It is at the TL's discretion to do this if they feel you are not providing useful input. Again, this is nothing personal and you should remember that wartime is different than peacetime.",
"title":"Wartime"
},
{
"location":"/training/glossary/",
"text":"Ever wonder what all of those strange words you sometimes see in our documentation mean? This page is here to help.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTerm\n\n\nDescription\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIC / Incident Commander\n\n\nThe incident commander is the person responsible for bringing any major incident to resolution. They are the highest ranking individual on any major incident call, regardless of their day-to-day rank. Their decisions made as commander are final. \nMore info\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDeputy\n\n\nTypically the backup IC. The deputy's job is to support the IC during the call, providing them with any help they need. \nMore info\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nScribe\n\n\nThe scribe's job is to keep a log of all activities performed during the call in a written chat log on Slack. \nMore info\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nResolver\n\n\nA person on the incident call who is able to help resolve issues within a particular system. Also referred to as an SME (see below). \nMore info\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSME\n\n\n\"Subject Matter Expert\", someone who is an expert in a particular service or subject who can provide information to the IC, and perform resolution actions for a particular system. \nMore info\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCAN Report\n\n\nCAN stands for \"Conditions\" \"Actions\" \"Needs\", if an IC asks you for a CAN report, you should provide the current state of your service (condition), what actions need to be taken to return it to a healthy state (actions), and what support you need in order to perform the actions (needs).\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSev / Severity\n\n\nHow severe the incident is. The \"sev\" of an incident determines the type of response we give. The higher the severity, the higher the likelihood of making risky actions to resolve the situation. \nMore info\n.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpan of Control\n\n\nRefers to the number of direct reports you have. For example, if the IC has 10 people as direct reports on a call, they have a large span of control. We aim to make the span of control as minimal as we can while still being productive.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGrenade Thrower\n\n\nSomeone who joins the call at a late time in the game, and provides information that completely derails the current thinking. They then leave almost immediately.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nExecutive Swoop\n\n\nWhen an executive comes on the call and drops some sort of bombshell. A version of grenade throwing.",
"text":"This site documents parts of the Spearhead Systems technical support response process. It is a cut-down version of our internal documentation, used at Spearhead Systems for any incident or service request, and to prepare new employees for on-call responsibilities. It provides information not only on preparation but also what to do during and after.\n\n\nThis documentation is complementary to what is available in our \nexisting wiki\n.\n\n\nWhat is this?\n#\n\n\nA collection of pages detailing how to efficiently deal with any incident or service request that might arise, along with information on how to go on-call effectively. It provides lessons learned the hard way, along with training material for getting you up to speed quickly.\n\n\nWho is this for?\n#\n\n\nIt is intended for our technical support staff and customers/partners looking for more details regarding our support process. \n\n\nWhy do I need it?\n#\n\n\nAs a service provider Spearhead Systems deals with technical support requests on a daily basis. The reason we exist is to deliver our technical support services which boils down to responsind to incidents and service requests. We want to deliver a smooth and seamless experience for resolving our customers issues therefore this documentation is a guideline for how we handle these requests. This documentation will give you a head start on how to deal with issues in a way which leads to the fastest possible recovery time.\n\n\nWhat is covered?\n#\n\n\nAnything from preparing to \ngo on-call\n, definitions of \nseverities\n, incident \ncall etiquette\n, all the way to how to run a \npost-mortem\n, providing a \npost-mortem template\n and even a \nsecurity incident response process\n.\n\n\nWhat is missing?\n#\n\n\nLots, dig in an help us complete the picture. We can migrate most processes from Sharepoint here. We're also looking for experienced operations/support people who are willing to share their experience with us and help us provide a better support service.\n\n\nLicense\n#\n\n\nThis documentation is provided under the Apache License 2.0. In plain English that means you can use and modify this documentation and use it both commercially and for private use. However, you must include any original copyright notices, and the original LICENSE file.\n\n\nWhether you are a Spearhead Systems customer or not, we want you to have the ability to use this documentation internally at your own company. You can view the source code for all of this documentation on our GitHub account, feel free to fork the repository and use it as a base for your own internal documentation.\n\n\nPlease also check-out \nPagerDuty's\n response documentation which has made our own efforts in documenting our process much easier.",
"text":"A collection of pages detailing how to efficiently deal with any incident or service request that might arise, along with information on how to go on-call effectively. It provides lessons learned the hard way, along with training material for getting you up to speed quickly.",
"text":"As a service provider Spearhead Systems deals with technical support requests on a daily basis. The reason we exist is to deliver our technical support services which boils down to responsind to incidents and service requests. We want to deliver a smooth and seamless experience for resolving our customers issues therefore this documentation is a guideline for how we handle these requests. This documentation will give you a head start on how to deal with issues in a way which leads to the fastest possible recovery time.",
"text":"Anything from preparing to go on-call , definitions of severities , incident call etiquette , all the way to how to run a post-mortem , providing a post-mortem template and even a security incident response process .",
"text":"Lots, dig in an help us complete the picture. We can migrate most processes from Sharepoint here. We're also looking for experienced operations/support people who are willing to share their experience with us and help us provide a better support service.",
"text":"This documentation is provided under the Apache License 2.0. In plain English that means you can use and modify this documentation and use it both commercially and for private use. However, you must include any original copyright notices, and the original LICENSE file. Whether you are a Spearhead Systems customer or not, we want you to have the ability to use this documentation internally at your own company. You can view the source code for all of this documentation on our GitHub account, feel free to fork the repository and use it as a base for your own internal documentation. Please also check-out PagerDuty's response documentation which has made our own efforts in documenting our process much easier.",
