T 0.17 Loss of Devices, Storage Media and Documents

There are a variety of causes that can lead to a loss of equipment, data storage media or documents. Directly, availability is a concern. But it may also mean that confidential information falls into the wrong hands if the data storage media have not been completely encrypted. The replacement of equipment or data storage media incurs costs, but also if they emerge again, information can be disclosed or unwanted programmes can reside in them.

Mobile terminal equipment and mobile data storage media can be particularly easily lost. Today, on small memory cards, gigantic amounts of data can be stored. However, it also happens again and again that printed documents are inadvertently left somewhere, for example in restaurants or on public transport.

Examples:

• An employee uses the journey in the tramway to her workplace to read over some documents. When getting off the tram in a hurry at her destination stop, she leaves the documents inadvertently on her neighbouring place. Although the documents are not confidential, several signatures of high-profile executives must nevertheless be collected once again as a consequence.
• At a major event, while searching through his briefcase, an employee inadvertently drops a memory card with confidential calculations on the ground without noticing. The finder views its contents on his laptop and sells the information to the competition.
• A manufacturer sends CDs with software updates for bug fixing by post to his customers. Some of these CDs are lost in the post. Neither the sender nor the recipients are informed about it. As a consequence, the effected customers experience malfunctions in the software.