Terminology

The following list of terms will help you navigate the Crisis Response section of this document. You'll find some terms mirror those used in incident response, while some will have slightly different definitions.

• Crisis - an extraordinary event or situation that serves as an existential threat to people, the operational environment, assets or reputation requiring a strategic, adaptive and timely organizational response
• Crisis Management - coordinated activities to lead, direct and control an organization with regards to its response to a crisis
• Incident - a potentially costly yet generally foreseeable event, e.g., availability, performance degradation, market volatility, increased competition, etc., that disrupts normal business processes
• Emergent Issue - a situational problem that does not present a significant impact to strategic objectives, reputation or viability of the organization but may require comment or organized activity to avert an incident or crisis
• Emergency - a sudden, short-lived threat generally involving people or physical assets that requires immediate action or assistance to mitigate
• Incident Command System (ICS) - a standardized emergency management construct created by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide an integrated organizational structure that reflects the complexity and demands of single or multiple incidents
• Area Command - an organizational structure used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to oversee the management of multiple incidents or oversee the management of a very large or evolving situation with multiple ICS organizations
• Incident Commander (IC) - the individual responsible for incident management having overall authority and responsibility for conducting and managing response operations
• Executive Crisis Leadership Team - a group of Executives who make enterprise-wide strategic decisions for the business during a crisis situation and pre-crisis
• Crisis Management Plan - a document defining the personnel, procedures and resources needed to manage a crisis from beginning to end
• Crisis Team Leader - the equivalent of an Incident Commander for a crisis situation based on their functional area of expertise or charge
• Crisis Response - the immediate actions taken in response to a crisis situation to contain it and the steps taken pre-crisis to develop the capabilities and readiness to do so
• Crisis Response Management - the triage and initial treatment stages of a crisis situation and the effective activations to support the complete crisis management lifecycle
• Incident Response - the process for addressing and solving an incident of varying severity in order to limit damage and reduce recovery time and costs
• Emergency Response - the process of responding to a range of life-safety events and threats to the environment to mitigate damage and loss