Your One-Page Emergency Overview (IR-1)
You’ve built all the pieces: your incident response plan (IR-8), your practice habits (IR-2), your testing routine (IR-3), your contact lists (IR-6), everything.
But when your email gets hacked at 2 AM, do you remember where you saved all that? Do you know which thing to grab first?
IR-1 is your simple one-page overview that says: “Here’s where everything is, here’s what matters most to me, and here’s my approach when things go wrong.”
What IR-1 Actually Is
It’s not your detailed plan (that’s IR-8). It’s the document that points to everything else and explains your priorities.
It’s like that emergency card in your wallet with your blood type and who to call - you don’t need your full medical history on it, just the critical info that helps when you’re not thinking clearly.
What Goes In It
Where your stuff lives:
Location of your incident response plan
Where you keep important passwords/recovery codes
Where your contact lists are saved
Your priorities:
What matters most (email, bank accounts, work files?)
What you’d tackle first if multiple things went wrong
When you call for help vs. handle it yourself
Your approach:
How you think about digital security (cautious? practical?)
How often you’ll review everything (yearly? every 6 months?)
That’s it. One page.
Why Anyone Would Bother
Six months from now, you won’t remember where you saved your incident response plan or what accounts you decided were most critical. A year from now, you definitely won’t.
This one-page document is the thing you grab when something goes wrong. It reminds you where everything else is and what your priorities are.
Make It In Ten Minutes
Open a document. Write:
My Digital Emergency Overview
My incident response plan is: [location] My backup codes are: [location] Important contacts are: [location]
If things go wrong, I handle in this order:
[Email? Bank? Phone?]
I call for help when: [Ransomware? Identity theft? When I’m stuck?]
I review this: [Once a year? Every 6 months?]
Done. Save it somewhere you’ll actually find it.
The Difference From IR-8
IR-8 is your detailed action plan - “If X happens, do steps 1, 2, 3.”
IR-1 is your overview - “Here’s where my plans are, here’s what I care about most, here’s my philosophy.”
IR-8 is the recipe. IR-1 is the note on your fridge that says “recipes are in the blue binder, and we prioritize not burning the house down.”
You’ve completed all eight incident response controls: what to do (IR-4), detecting problems (IR-5), your written plan (IR-8), who to notify (IR-6), practice (IR-2), testing (IR-3), getting help (IR-7), and your overview that ties it together (IR-1).
Next: A complete recap of the full incident response system, then we move to Access Control.
