IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Threats Catalogue Deliberate Acts Remarks
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T 4.1 Disruption of power supply
Despite high assurance of a continuity of supply, power supply will be
disrupted from time to time. For the major part such failures, with a duration
of less than one second, are so short that people will not notice them.
However, IT operations can be disrupted even by failures of more than 10 ms.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, approximately 100 network downfalls of
this type were recorded in 1983 as nation-wide measurements were carried out
at some 60 measuring points. Of these, five failures lasted for up to 1 hour,
and one had a duration of more than one hour. These interruptions were due
exclusively to failures of the supply network. In addition, interruptions may be
caused by disconnection for unannounced maintenance/repair purposes or by
cables damaged during foundation works.
Not only direct power consumers (PC, lighting, etc.) depend on power supply.
All infrastructure installations nowadays are either directly or indirectly
dependent on electric power. For instance: elevators, pneumatic dispatch
systems, air-conditioning, intruder and fire detection devices, and telephone
private branch exchanges. Even water supply in high-rise buildings is
currently dependent on electric power due to the pumps needed for generation
of pressure in the upper storeys.
Example:
In a large Southern German industrial plant, the entire power supply was
interrupted for several hours on account of technical problems at the power
utility. This resulted in an interruption of production and in the failure of all
computers of the development divisions that had no auxiliary power supply.
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000