IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Threats Catalogue Deliberate Acts Remarks
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T 2.57 Inadequate storage of media in the event of
an emergency
If data need to be recovered following damage to an IT system, it is often
necessary to copy the data backups first to separate storage media. This
applies, in particular, to complex data structures such as databases, as the
recovery of data here is not always a smooth and error-free process. If the
available storage capacity is insufficient, a hasty reaction in during an
emergency may result in an additional loss of data.
Example:
At a company running a large database application, the database management
system (DBMS) indicated an inconsistency in the database. Thereby, the
system management took the database out of operation and restored the most
recent backup of the data in the production system. However, only the log and
configuration files of the apparently corrupt database had been backed up. As
a result of this action, all modifications of the data since the last backup were
lost - an unknown error in the DBMS had prevented the recovery of these
changes. A subsequent analysis of the log and configuration files showed that
the database had, in fact, remained consistent. If sufficient disk space had been
available, the old productive system could have been ready for operation again
without any loss of data, following identification and elimination of the
apparent inconsistency.
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000