Critical Tier A critical alert indicates that a metric has breached its compliance threshold, a fundamental rights concern has been identified, or multiple warning-level alerts have occurred simultaneously or in rapid succession. Immediate investigation is initiated. The AI Governance Lead is notified within 24 hours. If the breach indicates potential harm, the break-glass procedure is considered. The serious incident reporting process is assessed for applicability: does the event meet the Article 3(49) definition of a serious incident? If so, the Article 73 reporting timeline begins. Critical alerts are routed through the real-time alerting service with guaranteed delivery and acknowledgement tracking. An unacknowledged critical alert escalates automatically to the named alternate and then to the AI Governance Lead. Key outputs

• Immediate investigation with AI Governance Lead notification within 24 hours
• Break-glass procedure consideration
• Serious incident reporting assessment
• Real-time alerting with acknowledgement tracking and auto-escalation