In the most basic terms, an incident is a situation in which an entity's information is at risk, whether the situation is real or simply perceived.

--from Incident Response
by Richard Forno and Kenneth R. van Wyk

Examples of an incident include:

• Exposure of Social Security Numbers and home addresses
• Replacement of a departmental web site with obscenities
• Infection of a computer by a worm that then attempts to spread itself to other computers
• Sharing of copyrighted music without permission from the copyright holder
• Taking advantage of operating system vulnerabilities or careless system management in order to access a host without authorization (often termed hacking).

Action can be taken by the Rutgers University Computing Incident Response Team (RU CIRT) when:  

• there is a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy for Computing and Information Technology Resources,  the Code of Student Conduct, or of the law
• the source of the incident is a Rutgers user or computer
• the specific computer or user causing the problem can be reliably identified