BSI ID: G 0.24

Negligence, improper use or untrained handling can result in damage to equipment and data carriers, which can seriously disrupt the operation of the IT system. There is also a risk that important information will be lost as a result of such damage, which cannot be reconstructed or can only be reconstructed at great expense.

Examples:

• In one company, an insider exploited his knowledge that an important server was sensitive to excessive operating temperatures and blocked the ventilation slots for the power supply fan with an object hidden behind the server. Two days later, the hard drive in the server suffered a temperature-related failure and the server was out of operation for several days.

• An employee was so annoyed by repeated system crashes that he took out his anger on his work computer. He kicked the computer so hard that the hard drive was damaged beyond repair. Only some of the data stored on the hard drive could be recovered from a backup made the previous day.

• Knocked-over coffee cups or moisture from watering flowers can cause short circuits in an IT system.