Incident management training on CD

My good friends and colleagues Michael Miora and Stephen Cobb have put together an excellent training tool called “Incident Management CD” (IMCD) for anyone working on contingency plans. The content is Michael’s, and Stephen does the narration.

I met Michael and Stephen many years ago when we were all involved in the National Computer Security Association (NCSA); both were important contributors to the _Computer Security Handbook, 4th Edition_ and both are now adjunct professors in the Master of Science in Information Assurance program which I direct at Norwich University.

The IMCD product from ContingenZ is trivially easy to install to disk. A window appears with contents in a panel on the left and text in a panel on the right.

In the full product, Stephen Cobb’s mellifluous voice takes us through the three major sections of the program:

* Part 1 covers incident management training.

* Part 2 is a guided analysis, where users are “asked a series of questions that will form the basis of the automated analysis that IMCD performs.”

* Part 3 is where users can create and print their Incident Management Plan based on their prior interactions with the IMCD engine.

In addition to these sections, the IMCD product includes appendices. In addition to information about ContingenZ, the appendices include a resource guide with, among others, white papers on:

* Incident Management

* Building an Incident Response Team

* Using the Generalized Cost Containment (GCC) Model

* Using Reserve Systems for Business Continuation

* Incident Management Overview: Recognize, React, Respond

I found it hard to read the PDF files in the relatively small window of the IMCD interface, but all of these appendix files are available as individual PDF files in the directory (C:Program FilesContingenZIMCDusapartAcontent > if you install to the default directory).

The Help section has information on registering, backing up your files, icons, and keyboard shortcuts. There’s also a list of frequently asked questions; I was amused to find that it has exactly three questions. Now that’s what I call a well-documented product.

You can download a free evaluation copy in which the narration is disabled; however, it also has a sample database that illustrates what a fully implemented plan can look like.

As always, I want to make it clear that I have no financial interest whatever in ContingenZ Corporation or in the IMCD; my bias is that I like and respect the people who put together this excellent tool.

You can find out more at:

https://www.contingenz.com/imcd.htm