What distinguishes a major incident from a standard incident?

• A. A major incident has high impact and urgency, requiring faster escalation, cross-functional coordination, and communication with senior stakeholders.
• B. A major incident is simply a longer duration incident.
• C. A major incident affects only non-critical services.
• D. A major incident requires no escalation or communication.

Answer: (C)

A major incident is defined by the business impact and the urgency to restore service, not just how long it lasts. When a service is critical to the business and downtime would cause significant disruption, the incident is treated as major. That triggers rapid escalation, cross-functional coordination across teams, and direct communication with senior stakeholders to mobilize resources quickly and keep leadership informed. This fast, coordinated response is what sets a major incident apart from normal incidents.

Why this matters: duration alone isn’t the deciding factor—some major incidents can be short but have severe impact, while long incidents without critical impact don’t require the same level of coordination. Similarly, incidents involving non-critical services don’t meet the threshold for a major incident, and saying there’s no escalation or communication would defeat the purpose of managing a high-impact event.