T 2.78 Ineffectual regeneration of data stocks during archiving

Data media may age both physically and technologically. Furthermore, data formats are occasionally complemented by new syntactical and/or structural features. Both procedures may render archived data no longer readable (see T 2.72 Inadequate migration of archive systems).

Therefore, electronically archived documents should be copied to new data media and/or converted to new, up-to-date data formats at longer intervals. This entails the risk that data is removed from its context when being transferred to new data media or that semantic changes are accidentally performed when converting the data to other data formats.

Additionally, there are manipulation options while transmitting the data to a new storage medium. In this, even data stored to WORM media may be "changed".

Upon database migration, it may be necessary to destroy the old data media. For this, please refer to threat T 2.81 Ineffectual destruction of data media during archiving.

Examples:

• While migrating the databases, previous versions of documents stored in different versions are deleted due to the lack of space although these are still required for verification purposes.
• Files initially stored in a revision-proof manner on WORM media are transferred to new data media. In doing so, the files are replaced during copying, i.e. individual files are not transferred to the new medium, but falsified files are inserted instead.