Incident Response & Escalation defines how your organisation detects, responds to, and learns from AI system failures or harmful outputs. An AI incident might include the system producing discriminatory outputs, making critical errors, suffering a security breach, causing operational disruptions, or violating regulatory requirements. Effective incident response includes detection mechanisms (how you know something has gone wrong), clear escalation pathways (who needs to be notified), documented procedures for containment and remediation, communication protocols for affected stakeholders, and post-incident reviews to prevent recurrence.
AI incidents can escalate rapidly—an automated system making biased decisions at scale, or a chatbot producing offensive content publicly—and the consequences can be severe. This dimension assesses whether your organisation has AI-specific incident response plans, escalation pathways, and post-incident review processes.
Why It Matters
Without a clear incident response plan, AI failures can escalate into crises.
Maturity Levels
| Basic | Standard | Advanced | Leading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reactive only; no formal incident response plan. | Basic response plan for AI incidents. | AI-specific runbooks and escalation pathways established. | Integrated enterprise-wide incident response, with regular drills and continuous improvement. |
📥 Related Resources & Templates
Downloadable templates, examples, and frameworks to help you implement this dimension.
AI Incident Response Runbook
PremiumStep-by-step runbook for responding to AI incidents, including escalation procedures and communication protocols.
AI Incident Escalation Flowchart
Visual flowchart template for AI incident escalation paths and decision trees.
AI Incident Postmortem Report
PremiumTemplate for documenting AI incident postmortems, root cause analysis, and preventive measures.