Plan424 Frequently Asked Questions

It should include:

• the immediate actions that should be performed during and after any incident,
• the objectives these actions are intended to achieve,
• key contact and location details,
• Locations of key resources.

It should consist of short bulleted checklists, and be written in simple language that can be understood by people in the middle of a stressful situation. It should make reference to where complex technical procedures can be found, rather than include them directly.

It's a bad idea for three reasons:

1. Plans developed as printed documents or corporate web pages are not easy to read and navigate on a mobile phone. When faced with an emergency people need to know what they should do now. They do not need know why the plan was developed, who approved it, when it was last updated, what everybody else should do, and lots of other information which may legitimately be included in a written plan.
2. Smartphones and wireless networks have limited bandwidth, memory, and display size. You therefore need a concise plan designed to fit and display comfortably on almost any device.
3. Your existing plan probably has parts that should be kept confidential and which should only be distributed only on a need-to-know basis. It should not be distributed to everybody. By limiting distribution of team plans to team members, Plan424 maintains a degree of confidentiality and minimizes the amount anyone need to read and understand during an emergency.

Plan424's recommended approach is to make sure people can easily find out what they should be doing and why when an incident occurs.

Note that we can provide help with adapting your existing plan to be suitable for mobile use. Contact us for more information.

No. You have access to a selection of pre-written incident responses that you can incorporate and customize for your needs.

Yes, but keep in mind that if mobile internet services are disrupted, these features will not be available.

Also some users may not have active data plans on their phones, but rely instead on Wi-Fi networks. The external resources will not be available to these users in an emergency.

A recent copy of the emergency response plan is kept on the phone in case the internet isn't available.

We use encryption to protect plan data in transit, and we do our best to keep our systems secure.

However, we do not recommend that you rely on our security: a secret shared with many people is no longer a secret. Your plan will be shared with many people, especially when an incident occurs, so it should not include any information that is highly confidential (e.g. passwords).

Note also that with Plan424 each user only has access to incident responses that are relevant to them. For example, the IT team response for a security incident need not be shared with anybody outside the IT team.

Yes. This is the expected use. Most organizations will have a number of team plans in addition to an All Staff incident response plan.

Yes. You can upload names, and email addresses for users, as well as default passwords.

Yes. Our plans for larger companies allow a number of users to be given administrative privileges to modify the plan.

We have a range of monthly or annual plans for different sizes of companies. See Plan424 pricing plans for more details.