IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Threats Catalogue - Force Majeure Remarks
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T 1.1 Loss of personnel
Illness, accident, death or a strike can result in an unforeseen loss of personnel
resources. It also needs to be borne in mind that when a person terminates his
employment in the normal manner, the remaining time that he is available for
work can be shortened, for example, by his taking holidays during the notice
period.
In all cases, the result may be that critical tasks are no longer performed due to
the loss of manpower in IT applications. This is especially critical if the
person concerned holds a key position in the IT area and cannot be replaced
by alternative staff due to lack of technical expertise. IT operations could be
disrupted as a result.
A loss of personnel resources could also mean that specialist knowledge
and/or secret information is lost, preventing the person's duties being taken
over by to replacement staff.
Examples
- Due to prolonged illness, the Network Administrator was away from work.
In the company concerned, at first the network ran without any problems.
However, when the system crashed after two weeks no one was able to sort
out the problem. As a result the network was out of service for several
days.
- While the Administrator was on holiday, it was necessary for backup
purposes to access the backup tapes in the data backup safe. The access
code to the safe had been changed only recently and only the Administrator
knew the new code. It was not possible to restore the data for several days
as it was necessary first to find out the Administrator's whereabouts.
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Otober 2000