For the attention of Incident Reporting Users with access to the Incident Reporting Tool hosted on the IG Toolkit website.

Since the launch of the IG Toolkit Incident Reporting Tool in June 2013 there have been approximately 430 incidents opened but still not closed as advised within the "Checklist Guidance for Reporting, Managing and Investigating Information Governance and Cyber Security Serious Incidents Requiring Investigation". Therefore, new functionality has been built within the incident reporting tool in response to this issue.

How will this work?

An auto closure feature will automatically close incidents where no updates to an "open" record have been undertaken within the last 90 days. Relevant incident reporting users will be notified by email 10 days in advance of planned auto closure and within 24 hours after closure. Further details are described in Appendix A of the "Incident Reporting Tool User Guide".

When incidents are automatically closed you will be sent another notification email to inform you of the closure(s).

The emails will be sent to all the following persons:

1. The person that created the incident record.
2. The person that last updated the record.
3. The organisation administrator; (if not already one of the persons specified under a. or b.)

This functionality will help to ensure records are kept up to date or closed within a reasonable time frame.

It should be noted that any incident that has been "auto closed" can be re-opened at any time. Further instructions can be found in the "Incident Reporting Tool User Guide"

Consideration should also be given to the quality, accuracy and appropriateness of level 2 closed incident reports and the commitment HSCIC has to publication of information as specified within the IG Toolkit Incident Reporting Publication Statement found on the IG Toolkit "Publication" page.

Regards
External IG Delivery Team