Incident Response and Notification Process
Faciotech's uptime monitoring service ensures your websites and hosting environment remain available and secure. This article explains our incident response and notification process, describing the steps we take from initial detection through resolution and reporting.
Continuous Detection
Our monitoring service runs automated checks on your hosted websites and services at configurable intervals — as frequently as every minute for critical resources, or at longer intervals for lower-priority services. These checks verify that web pages load correctly, critical ports respond as expected, specific keywords appear on the page, and SSL certificates remain valid. If an anomaly is detected — such as repeated connection failures, a missing keyword on a login page, or an expired certificate — the system immediately flags the event.
Initial Alert and Acknowledgement
When a potential issue is detected, our monitoring platform sends an internal alert to the on-call engineer via email and Slack. Alerts are only raised after a second confirmation check to minimise false positives. The on-call engineer acknowledges the alert within 15 minutes and begins investigating the cause.
Investigation and Triage
Our technical team uses diagnostic tools such as server logs, network tests and hosting control panels to determine whether the issue is a transient glitch, a configuration change or a genuine service outage. Where possible, remediation is initiated immediately — for example, restarting a service or renewing an SSL certificate.
Escalation and Resolution
If the issue cannot be resolved quickly, it is escalated to a Tier 2 engineer or infrastructure lead. The escalation path ensures that more specialised resources are available to address hardware failures, network disruptions or security incidents. Throughout the investigation, the on-call engineer documents actions taken and the current status.
Client Communication
Once a confirmed outage affects a user-facing service, we notify clients through multiple channels to ensure timely awareness:
- Email notifications — An incident notice is sent to the email addresses configured in your alert contacts, summarising the problem, affected services and our remediation steps.
- SMS alerts — For critical issues, a text message is sent to your registered mobile number so that you receive immediate notification even if you are away from email.
- Status page updates — Our public status page at status.faciotech.com provides real-time information about ongoing incidents, maintenance windows and resolved issues. Clients can visit this page at any time to check the latest service status. If you have a custom status page (including those with a custom domain), your page will also reflect the current state of your monitored components.
- Social media updates — Brief updates are posted on our official social channels to inform a wider audience and reassure stakeholders that we are aware of the problem and working on a solution.
Maintenance Windows
If you have planned maintenance that will temporarily take services offline, you can schedule a maintenance window directly from the Server Monitor dashboard under the Maintenance tab. During a maintenance window, monitoring continues but alerts are suppressed, preventing unnecessary notifications to your team and your status page subscribers. You can also set maintenance windows through our support team if preferred.
Status Pages and Custom Domains
You can create public or private status pages to keep your own customers and stakeholders informed about the health of your services. Status pages can be configured with a custom domain — simply point a CNAME record to status.faciotech.com, verify DNS ownership in the module, and our team will activate the domain on the server. Subscribers to your status page will receive automatic email notifications when incidents are created or resolved. Manage your status pages from the Status Pages tab in the Server Monitor.
Post-Incident Reporting
After service is restored, an incident report is generated outlining the root cause, the corrective actions taken and any preventive measures identified. For major incidents, a more detailed post-mortem is produced within 48 hours. Historical uptime reports are available in the Reports tab so you have a transparent record of service availability over time.
Keeping Us Informed
Although the monitoring service is fully managed on our end, we ask that you notify us of any planned maintenance or changes to your infrastructure. This allows us to help you schedule maintenance windows and avoid unnecessary alerts. If you add new domains or services that require monitoring, you can add them directly via the Server Monitor or contact our support team.
Visual Overview of the Workflow
The incident lifecycle follows these steps:
- Detection of anomaly via automated check.
- Internal alert and acknowledgement.
- Investigation and triage.
- Resolution or escalation.
- Client notification (email, SMS, status page, social media).
- Post-incident reporting and follow-up.
Maintaining Current Contact Details
To ensure that you receive incident notifications without delay, keep your contact information up to date. You can manage your alert contacts directly from the Alerts tab in the Server Monitor, or contact our support team if your email address or mobile number changes.
Service Scope and Boundaries
Our monitoring covers the availability of your hosted websites, control panels, mail services and associated SSL certificates. It does not monitor client-side devices, third-party applications or network conditions outside of our hosting environment. Issues outside the monitoring scope may still affect availability; in such cases we will assist with diagnosis to the extent possible but cannot control external systems.
Severity and Prioritisation
Incidents are classified based on their impact and urgency:
- Critical — Complete outage or security risk; triggers immediate escalation.
- Warning — Potential issues such as high latency or certificate warnings; investigated promptly.
- Informational — Temporary spikes in response time; monitored for further signs of degradation.
Managing Notification Preferences
You can manage your alert contacts and notification preferences directly from the Alerts tab in the Server Monitor. Add or remove email addresses and phone numbers for SMS alerts, configure alert thresholds, and set repeat intervals to control how often you are notified while an issue persists.
