T 2.9 Poor adjustment to changes in the use of IT

The special organisational rules created for the use of information technology as well as the entire environment of a government agency or company are subject to constant change. Such changes can include the addition or relocation of an employee, an employee moving to a different office, the purchasing of new hardware or software, or a company supplying operating resources declaring bankruptcy. The fact that inadequate consideration of the necessary organisational changes can result in corresponding threats is indicated by the following examples:

• Due to changes made to the construction of a building, the existing escape routes were changed. Since the employees were not adequately informed of the altered escape routes, it becomes impossible to evacuate the building in the required time.
• Due to changes to an IT procedure, larger amounts of printer paper are required. Since the purchasing office was not informed of this, bottlenecks arose during live IT operations.
• Electronic documents or files are not automatically checked for malicious software upon reception because a corresponding anti-virus software is not available.
• When transmitting an electronic document, no one checked if the document was sent in a data format that could be read by the recipient.