T 4.13 Loss of stored data

The loss of stored data can have a major influence on IT operations. The loss or forgery of application data or customer databases can threaten the existence of private enterprises. In government agencies, the loss or forgery of important data could delay or even prevent the ability of the agency to perform administrative and other specialised tasks.

The loss of stored data can seriously affect business processes, and therefore seriously affect the entire organisation. When business information, regardless of its type, is destroyed or corrupted, this can cause delays in business processes and specialised tasks or even prevent their execution. Overall, the loss of stored data can lead to production losses and additional costs for the recovery of the data, and especially to long-term consequences such as a loss of trust by customers and partners or a negative image in the eyes of the public. The direct and indirect damages caused by a loss of data can even threaten the existence of an organisation.

Stored data can be lost for a variety of reasons:

• demagnetisation of magnetic data media due to ageing or unsuitable environmental conditions (temperature, humidity),
• exposure of magnetic data media to external magnetic fields,
• destruction of data media by force majeure such as fire or water,
• inadvertent deletion or overwriting of files,
• intentional or accidental setting of deletion flags in archive systems (see also T 5.106 Unauthorised overwriting or deletion of archival media),
• technical failure of peripheral storage (head crash),
• faulty data media,
• uncontrolled changes to stored data (loss of integrity), and
• destruction of data by malicious software (malware).