Sending incident reports (IR's) is a simple process in SOVA, and is the recommended way to get copies if IR's into the hands of your managers. No longer do you need to create an incident report in Word or Excel, save it as a PDF, create an email with your managers listed, attach the PDF and send it out. In SOVA, this can all happen in a couple clicks and has the added benefit of offering a more secure way to communicate sensitive information. For example, consider an average hotel that writes 300 incident reports each year. Let's assume that each of those incident reports gets send to an average of 6 people, via email. That's 1800 pieces of sensitive and potentially damaging information that's out there on the Internet, in email servers, on peoples laptops, on flash drives, etc. for the world to see. This can certainly present unique challenges for security professionals to try to manage and control these vast amounts of data.

With SOVA, communicating the details of an incident report is done securely within the web interface. Emails received would have a link that has a limited lifespan of 30 days. So if the recipient of your IR does not click the link in the first month after you send it, that link dies and is no longer accessible. This feature in and of itself can significantly reduce risk, and makes the IR distribution system in SOVA unique.

How to Send Incident Reports in SOVA:

Prerequisites:

1. Recipients of incident reports must be listed and have verified emails in the Communication screen, for the "Send IR" tab. Read our setup article for adding users to the Communication screen if you need assistance adding users as recipients of incident reports, or any other notification list found on the communication screen of SOVA..
   

Below is an example screenshot showing the IR listview from one of our clients (sensitive information has been redacted):

• Navigate to Reports > Incidents.
  
• Select one (or more) incident reports by checking the box in the left column
  
• Click the "Send IR" button
  
• A popup opens showing all recipients pre-selected from the Communication screen. Deselect names who you do not wish to receive this IR. See the screen below.
  

• Add an optional comment to your recipients in the popup shown above regarding the incidents, and verify that your email is listed in the "Reply-To:" field. If not, please add your email there so if your recipients reply to the email they receive that reply would come to you directly.
  
• Choose whether to send them the full PDF of the IR, or just a summary. The "Send PDF" checkbox is checked by default. If you leave it this way, your recipients would receive an email with a link to download the IR. As mentioned above, this link expires in 30 days. If you choose to not send the IR, then your recipients would get an overview of the incident only, but would not get access to the full PDF which can include images and other more sensitive data. An example email that your managers or clients would receive is shown below:
  

• By clicking the Download link, your recipients would receive a copy of the incident report PDF.
  

If a recipient claims that they didn't receive an IR communication, you can always navigate to Reports > SendIR Log to see what reports were sent and to whom. This log does not guarantee that the email was deliverable, simply that the email was sent to the recipient from the SOVA server.