Archive for category: Incidents

You are here: Home / Parking and Security Blog / Incidents

An incident is an event that results in unauthorized access, loss, disclosure, modification, disruption, or destruction of information or resources whether accidental or deliberate.

Incident Management Technology Improves Processes

/in , /by

Incident Management Technology

Incident management technology is software that can be used to correlate and report on occurrences.  This will help security personnel to have a better insight into how such events influence daily operations.

With the increasing number of people opting for all kinds of technology to help them in their daily operations, the expectations of these people have also increased for all sorts of services they receive. Time is money which is why people of this decade have become impatient. They want solutions as quickly as possible that are of a quality that becomes better for every interaction.

To maintain such a standard, a company needs employees that have a clear understanding of how things work, can troubleshoot anything, and know the in-depth history of the company. For this, they must have been around forever, which is almost impossible. To make this notion possible advanced technology software has been introduced. It can store all kinds of data which can be retrieved whenever the need arises. These latest tools improve the consistency, quality, and efficiency of the processes of your organization.

Four things that have helped the officers and staff tremendously to manage incidents and make the right decisions are mentioned below.

End-User Content

Modern devices and tools allow you to capture and record all kinds of information related to the incident. Officers assigned to resolve the issue (the end-user) would no longer need time to dig for background information and can get straight to work, thus reducing the turnaround time on these incidents.

Knowledge Management

With the help of this software and systems in place, information and databases are already available for instant use. These online systems are smarter, proactive, less labor-intensive, easier for the users to understand, and are available 24/7.

Configuration Management Data

A key benefit of this complex technological software is that they offer simple, graphical view of all the incidents and the information related to it. Most of this software is interactive and shows relationships between different factors which make it easy to diagnose current issues and their root cause.

Performance Data

The integration of technology into systems has made companies much more efficient and has increased the productivity of their employees. This is because they are able to track data in real time of their performance, identify where they are lagging behind, and in what areas they need to improve.

It can therefore be said that these modern infrastructures backed by upgraded and updated technological software are crucial for effective incident management.

Incident Management Technology Characteristics

Incidents and accidents can happen anytime and anywhere. To handle these issues in the best possible way one needs to have its countermeasures in place to match the complexity of the circumstance. Incident Management Software that offers an innovative solution to deal with such events needs to have a certain set of characteristics that make it truly remarkable. Some of the characteristics of efficient software are as follows.

Streamlines Reporting

A feature that proves the incident management technology to be most useful is that it allows those who use it to stay in compliance. The application of this software takes the key data of an incident and automatically records and delegates it accordingly. It even allows its users to fill out some forms that are a legal requirement online.

Assigns Action Plans

Efficient software allows users, the staff, patrol and enforcement officers, to come up with preventive and corrective action plans. In the case of this software, it helps to identify the areas where there is a high risk of incidents, most car parking violations, likelihood of assault, etc.

Provides Incident Tools for Investigation

The proficient software also allows the use of charts and graphs to understand the dynamics of the area under surveillance and the frequency of which the incidents have taken place. It provides analytical tools for finding the cause of the incident by identifying any stolen or unregistered cars as they enter a parking lot.

Allows Users to Report Occurrences

This software has gone a step further and is even compatible with smartphones that support Android, Windows, and iOS. Patrol officers can be designated to different places, and because they are connected to the software, the officers have the option to work in offline conditions which are even then synchronized with the main server.

Evaluates the Effectiveness of Action Plans

The most innovative incident management software allow the organization to identify and evaluate their level of efficiency and effectiveness in handling incidents, and the time spent to resolve each one.

Incident Management – What You Need to Know

/in , /by

Incident Management and Security Threats

Incident management ensures a level of insight that reduces liability and increases awareness.

There have always been security threats to almost everything that is valuable, including human life. Incidents and accidents take place because of vulnerabilities in the system. For the most part criminals plan ahead of time and will know what your weaknesses are and what protective measures have you been taking.

Many commercial thefts, or small street/parking lot crimes take place only because there are no proper, or advanced security and detection devices available on-site so that the issue can be dealt in real time. This leaves a gap in the detection and response time taken to resolve the incident.

Some common threats that people might face are mentioned below. You will find that not all of them are physical.

Theft

Many residents and small business owners fall victim to theft. The suspect usually enters the property while you are not there, takes what is yours, and can get away with it. Physical protection can only give you one perspective, and unfortunately human memory is imperfect. Therefore, many people are introducing the use of technology in the form of security cameras and alarms.

This solution has proven to be much more efficient than having an actual person patrolling because by the time you would have returned home, the thief would have been long gone and who is to say security would remember what the suspect looked like? With cameras you can recall the footage and not have to rely on a witness statement.

Even just this concept is enough to deter thieves in some cases.

Vandalism

A lot of people think that graffiti is a form of art, however it involves the destruction, damage, or defacement of property — either public or private. Acts of vandalism are mostly carried out in the wee hours in the morning when there is a very low chance of getting caught.

Tracking such incidents allows for the correlation of data for similar cases, and allows for the development of a profile or mode of operating or MO (motus operandi).

Assault

Places like parking lots, abandoned grounds, or houses are the most common for assaults. Places where even though a patrol officer might be on duty nearby, they may not come to know about it until it is too late.

To overcome this issue devices backed by applications should be used by enforcement officers to ensure that threats are handled the moment they take place.

Incident Management Software and Its Benefits

Law enforcement agencies have been equipping their staff with Incident Management Software to meet the time-sensitive demands in their field of work. It is vital for these agencies because they require solutions to issues almost as quickly as they arise.

The challenge here is that these people are constantly facing situations they could not possibly predict

…until now.

Below you will find five key benefits of Incident Management Software.

Improved Efficiency

With Incident Management Software (IMS) in place, you will see a major improvement in terms of efficiency and productivity within your organization. It may add clarity to an issue in no-time, with no room for assumptions or guesses.

IMS can categorize incidents base on certain characteristics (time, severity, etc.) and delegate to the closest security/law enforcement officer.

Transparency and Visibility

The software facilitates all communication between the staff, the department concerned, and with the individual who has encountered the issue — making it all extremely transparent and reliable. In most cases the software can package incidents for delivery to local police or protection services personnel.

Quicker Resolutions

Response rates to incident tickets of various levels have increased tremendously since IMS integration. This is because the software itself sorts the tickets with respect to severity, and then delegates to the technical support staff or to the front-line support staff.

During assessment, patterns can be developed or past processes can be reviewed to ensure incident handling is consistent and tracked appropriately for future cases.

Quantitative Feedback

Incident Management Software is also capable of recording the level of effort made and time spent on each of the incident which clearly shows the efficiency level of each officer and the supporting staff and as a whole of the organization.

Meet Service Level Agreements

If the agreement states that a particular issue needs to be resolved in a specific duration of time then this software can set a time constraint for each incident, and keep track of time actually spent on the issue by the staff member.

Incident Management Process

An incident can be defined as an occurrence of dangerous or exciting things. They may vary from areas such as software development, accidents, assaults on the roads, or in the parking lots. This means that they can be either tangible or intangible. To handle these issues in a systematic manner, an Incident Management Process is used. It is a critical process that involves five stages. In this blog we will discuss these five stages in detail so that you understand and are able to apply the same concept in your company’s day-to-day operations.

Stage # 1: Identification and Logging

An incident is identified with the help of tools and feedback, or through monitoring a certain situation. Then it needs to be logged into the software. For the most part, information that is logged into the system includes: the time and date of occurrence, type of incident, its status, a brief description, the officer’s name, and any relevant attachments.

Stage # 2: Classification and Prioritization

It is important to classify incidents based on their type and level of complexity; or attention that they require. This makes it easier to prioritize the incidents that are important and need to be resolved based on their urgency. The factors upon which incidents are prioritized include: impact, severity, and risk it poses.

Stage # 3: Investigation and Analysis

At this stage the presiding officer may investigate the incident and identify its reason for occurring in the first place. Doing this can help identify key points to assist in predicting similar incidents and possibly preventing them from re-occurring in the future.

Stage # 4: Resolution and Recovery

This is where the incident is resolved, and steps are taken to reverse the consequences of the occurrence. Returning those effected back into their normal working conditions.

Stage # 5: Incident Closure

Finally, when all essential information has been submitted regarding the incident, the case is closed and the status is changed in the system.

Incident Management Tools Optimize Parking Operations

/in , /by

Incident Management Tools

Your primary focus in incident management technology is to be able to better manage and document these incidents and others that can occur simultaneously in your parking lot. By making use of incident management tools, you can increase efficiency and be more effective. Ultimately, this will provide you with more control over your parking lot operations.

Incident management tools would further help you keep track of the vital information of the incident details. Minimizing lost information and miscommunication. With management tools, you can tackle all the ambiguity regarding the handling of the incident.

The best incident management tools are effective and efficient. They change the way operational issues regarding parking are handled and managed. In addition, these solutions now include mobile phone apps that provide you with ample support by reporting incidents that occur anywhere as you go. Mobile tablets allow your staff the ease of filling out complete digital reports from any location.

Two of the most critical aspects of these applications that provide value to the entire parking operations include

Using multimedia to enhance incident reporting

The ability to send and share photos and video among mobile devices and its applications make it easier to provide rapid response to the incidents. It will improve your response with solutions during a medical emergency or issue, in the event of a fight, or some other situation.

These applications are available on the mobile with multimedia. It helps keep the incidents honest and ensures that the facts are clear regarding every party involved in the issue.

Streamlining the training process

Using these tools and making your staff comfortable with them is extremely necessary to avoid any loss of information. Therefore, it is essential to keep training the staff on a regular basis in case the team starts to change.

Through the use of incident management tools, you can optimize your parking operations. Thus eliminating insufficient management effects, and realize a sound return on your investment.

security guard with wireless radio on escalatorOptimize Incident Response Processes

Incident response processes are vital aspects of incident management. Whenever any incident or causality takes place, it is necessary to respond to it. It is essential to find a solution in the lowest time frame. Therefore, you need to move fast and optimize your response processes. Achieve the optimal response by integrating your security tools with the workflows of the operation team. As soon as an incident takes place, an alert should generate with all the necessary details and information. The person closest should receive these details, and they become responsible for fixing it.

There are a few effective ways to optimize your alerting and incident response time and process. We will outline some of them below:

Optimizing Alert Management and Incident Audit

Alert Management

Management of your alerts would involve handling the workflow of your alerts. Therefore, your parking security staff needs to triage the alerts by importance and required help. It is crucial they have access to all solid information on their fingertips to make a timely decision. Due to integrating your security alerting tools with your chat operations tools and incident management tools, your team can make these appropriate decisions. As a result, you help deliver the security alerts directly to your development and operations team and will keep the data available at a single place for everyone to see and access.

Incident Audit

After managing alerts and streamlining processes, it is essential to have an audit response strategy in place. This strategy is to review and analyze these processes. In addition, it creates accountability and provides visibility for the whole parking management framework. It does this by looking for answers to questions like; Who dismissed a particular alert?, When was it dismissed?, What was the explanation?, What were the remarks?

Optimizing Incident Response Time

By automating the aspects of the response process which does not require a human touch, it will be more necessary for you and for your incident management to optimize your incident response time. Here, the cloud security systems that are efficient and work effectively provide automatic visibility and alerts. It also helps in prioritizing the alerts based on their severity from high, medium, and low.

Therefore, you can integrate these alerts directly with cloud security platforms that are available as a parking enforcement tool. In addition, this tool would automate the notification process and allow you and your security team to handle alerts by their severity levels.

Measuring Success

If you want to see the effectiveness and efficiency of the response process used with the help of incident management tools and cloud, it is necessary for you to measure the end-results and keep refining the processes. This ensures to make sure they are still serving the parking management need for which you chose them for in the first place. Some of the questions that you can ask yourself to measure its success could include; What was the triage response time for each incident? What was their accuracy? How quickly were they resolved? How weren’t many of the incidents caught and resolved on time?

If you are able to better understand where and why incidents are happening, then that is a measure of success.  Gone are the days or a reactive security office, when a proactive one can take its place.  Of course being reactive is always going to be a necessity, but with proper tools past incidents can be reviewed to determine how they may be connected, or better yet how they could have been stopped.

With a proper incident management and tracking tool, the opportunity definitely is possible.  This is an obvious and sensible line of thought when we consider how Clery Reporting has come to be.

Incident Management Tools: Make the Right Choice

/in /by

Before making a final decision, there is always an amount of  research and effort that goes into it. So if you are currently looking for incident management tools for your parking lots, then you need to certain features.

You need to follow a process that can lead you towards a suitable decision. This process is impacted by the tools that are available to support your decision.

Your decision should rely on a solution that is technologically advanced to allow you to gain visibility and data.

Here are a few considerations that should be made before a suitable decision is reached:

Understand Your Needs

The first step required when choosing the right tool for your incident management is identifying your needs.  It will give you an idea as to what your system requirements will be. You need to understand what tools you already possess versus the areas you need to invest in and improve upon. Look for tools that fulfill your needs and contribute positively to your overall strategy and improvement.

Build an Incident Response Process

Map out and building a clear incident response process. This will help you to identify what tools are required and will also help determine how to connect the old tools with the new.  The key aspects of this process would include focusing on the alert management function as to what happens when an alert arises? How it is dealt with, and integrated into the system & the operations tool that are connected? Lastly, with how much visibility are these alerts handled?

Prioritize the Integrations for your Incident Management

You need to integrate your incident management tools with your operations in order to achieve quality results. You need to prioritize and consider the tools used by your team to insure they fit with each other. These tools include those regarding event activity, incident occurrences, team communications, configuration management, and case management.

So when it comes to incident management, it can become a little overwhelming for those who are responsible for the selection of a parking management system to select the right one with the right tools that suit the needs and fulfill the demand of your company.

Running it down with other processes simultaneously will give you a good way to start. You can then get everything streamlined and be serious about your requirements in terms of monitoring, alerting, and compliance reporting. These are the areas that you need to pay special attention. Neglecting these areas in today’s business environment would be detrimental.

Importance of Digital Incident Reporting

As we speed up our journey down the rabbit hole of digital information and technology, digital incident reporting is becoming increasingly important.

A growing list of rules and regulations that apply to a wide range of businesses and government agencies pervades. This is creating further need to double and triple check a variety of points within accountability parameters.

With paper systems in place, there are many levels of access, including chains of command, location, and ease of transfer. While this all may seem overwhelming, it does not even address the near inability to create logistics reports, look at data, and trace patterns.

All of which you need to understand incidents further without requiring countless working hours.

Why Digital Incident Reporting Is Important

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we now need to easily pull up a report listing all health and safety incidents that have happened in a single facility at any time. This can truly be a game changer in showing the legitimacy of organizations. Having stored documentation that is easily accessible in one database can also be crucial for any company.

It could be the actual difference between winning and losing in cases related to incident-based legal defense. Organization has its’ own positive incentives. Once you achieve this, the ROI for being prepared and thorough seems well worth the invested time and effort.

With a modern digital incident reporting system in place, you can create reports which are easily logged into the IncidentAdmin database of OperationsCommander (OPS-COM) and gathered into one virtual location.

It doesn’t get any more convenient and saving time is a huge advantage.  With paper systems, we spend so much of it just transferring the information and trying to keep track of it. However, today we can let the computers do the transferring, tracking and recording which is a giant leap in time-based productivity. This will free up much of your organization to create a much more highly functioning set of working parameters, which builds momentum for better health and safety records.

The Benefits of Digital Record Keeping

Tracking resolution of escalated incidents is a large part of the overall process when looking at the necessary resources used within a paper system. These are reports that require further attention, which will need follow-up practices deployed. Still, think a paper system is the way to go?

There are so many arguments against paper-based systems at this point that it is counter-intuitive to rely on the old methods of processing incident reports. Digital connection means virtually linking everyone involved and allowing them access to the information in one cohesive group. It’s accountability at its strongest.

Additional benefits are the ability to track repeat offenders or people tied to multiple incidents. Unfortunately, scammers will always try to beat the system. However, a digital incident reporting system not only creates a record for backup of acceptable process.

This means you can easily execute reporting needs, accurately, and reliably.

With the ability to generate summary reports that you can share among the key decision makers can drastically cut down on the amount of catching up anyone in your organization might have to do in relation to workplace incidents. This summarizes the most pertinent information directly to the individual(s) who need it. It’s quick, efficient, and simple – all in a few clicks.

Digital incident reporting lightens caseloads, creates a more streamlined process, and allows the system to support workers. So, while paper systems have had a good run, it appears digital incident tracking is here to stay!

IncidentAdmin a reliable incident tracking and reporting element that can be linked to ParkAdmin and ViolationAdmin seamlessly making OperationsCommander (OPS-COM) Parking and Security Management Platform the most comprehensive solution in the market today.