{"id":5551,"date":"2016-01-19T20:03:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T20:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiacademstg.wpengine.com\/20000academy\/?p=5551"},"modified":"2025-07-05T13:43:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T13:43:04","slug":"how-to-manage-emergency-changes-as-part-of-itil-change-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2016\/01\/19\/how-to-manage-emergency-changes-as-part-of-itil-change-management\/","title":{"rendered":"How to manage Emergency Changes as part of ITIL Change Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything in IT Service Management is a change, and the goal of Change Management<\/a>\u00a0is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes. This is in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents on service quality, and consequently, to improve the day-to-day operations of the organization. But, there is one type of change that requires swift reaction and prompt implementation with little or no time for in-depth impact analysis or testing: the Emergency Change<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Before we continue, you can find a lot of information regarding Change Management (in order to familiarize yourself with Change Management, you can start with the following article: ITIL V3 Change Management \u2013 at the heart of Service Management<\/a>).<\/p>\n

What is an Emergency Change?<\/h2>\n

Every business is application driven, which leaves businesses vulnerable to a wide array of security and security-related risks. One of the most popular and dangerous risks is called \u201c0-day exploit<\/strong>\u201d (zero-day exploit). A zero-day vulnerability refers to a hole in software that is unknown to the vendor. This security hole is then exploited by hackers before the vendor becomes aware and hurries to fix it \u2013 this exploit is called a zero-day attack.<\/p>\n

Even when a fix becomes available (and even more people become aware of the exploit), not all IT organizations implement the fix right away, leaving enough time for malicious people or software to actually try to break into systems that haven\u2019t been patched.<\/p>\n

Implementing such high-risk security patches is the most common example of an Emergency Change \u2013 a change that must be implemented as soon as possible, for example to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch.
\n

<\/div>