An incident report is the formal documentation used to communicate the details of a significant event, such as a technical outage, to relevant stakeholders, including management. This report provides a comprehensive summary of the incident, a timeline of events, the impact on operations, and a detailed account of the remedial actions taken by the technical team. Its primary purpose is to provide a clear, concise record for analysis, review, and decision-making, which directly aligns with the management team's request.

A. Knowledge base article: This is a troubleshooting guide for recurring issues, not a formal report to management about a specific, concluded outage.

B. Non-disclosure agreement: This is a legal contract to ensure confidentiality and is irrelevant to reporting the details of a technical failure.

D. Standard operating procedure: This document dictates the pre-approved steps to perform during an incident, not the summary report created after the incident.

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-61 Rev. 2

Computer Security Incident Handling Guide.

Section 2.3.4

Reporting (Page 13): States

"Reports can also be created to give management a synopsis of the incident handling team’s activities." This confirms that reports are the appropriate medium for summarizing incident details for management.

Section 3.4

Post-Incident Activity (Page 43): Discusses creating a follow-up report after an incident is resolved

which "provides a complete documentation of the incident" and is used for review and lessons learned.

2. Purdue University

Incident Response Handbook.

Section: Incident Reporting (Page 5): Describes the purpose of an incident report: "The purpose of the incident report is to document the details of the incident... This report will be used to brief management... and to document actions taken." This directly supports providing an incident report to management.