Emergency Change Management Procedure (ENG-PROC-004)

1. Purpose

The purpose of this procedure is to outline the expedited process for authorizing, deploying, and retrospectively documenting an emergency change to resolve a critical issue, such as a service outage or a severe security vulnerability.

2. Scope

This procedure applies to all emergency changes required to restore service, fix a critical security flaw, or address an urgent operational issue in the production environment.

3. Overview

This procedure defines the workflow for emergency changes. It starts with the identification of a critical issue, followed by obtaining expedited approvals, performing a focused review, deploying the fix, and conducting a formal post-mortem review to ensure proper documentation is completed after the fact.

4. Procedure

Step	Who	What
1	Engineer	Identifies a critical issue requiring an emergency change and immediately notifies the Engineering Lead and Security Team.
2	Engineer	Obtains and documents verbal or written approval from an Engineering Lead and a member of the Security Team in an emergency change ticket.
3	Engineer / Peer Reviewer	An expedited peer and security review is performed on the proposed change to ensure it is a targeted and necessary fix.
4	Engineer	Deploys the approved change to the production environment to resolve the critical issue.
5	Engineering & Security Teams	Conduct a formal post-mortem review within 3 business days of the change. The standard change documentation and pull request are completed retroactively.

5. Standards Compliance

Procedure Step(s)	Standard/Framework	Control Reference
1-5	SOC 2	CC8.1
1-5	HIPAA Security Rule	45 CFR § 164.312(b)

6. Artifact(s)

An emergency change ticket with documented approvals and a link to a post-mortem report.

7. Definitions

Post-Mortem Review: A formal meeting and report that analyzes an incident or emergency change to understand the cause, impact, and actions taken, and to identify lessons learned to prevent recurrence.

Critical Issue: An issue that causes a service outage, data corruption, a severe security vulnerability, or significantly impacts customers’ ability to use the service.

8. Responsibilities

Role	Responsibility
Engineer	Identifies the need for an emergency change, implements the fix, and obtains necessary approvals.
Engineering Lead	Provides approval for the emergency change and participates in the post-mortem review.
Security Team	Provides approval for the emergency change, assesses security risk, and participates in the post-mortem review.