IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Threats Catalogue Deliberate Acts Remarks
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T 4.7 Defective data media
Failure of or defects in individual data media due to technical deficiencies or
damage are quite common. Such media include mass storage devices such as
hard disks, tapes, and cartridges. Hard disks can be destroyed by crashes of the
read/write head, while tapes and cassettes can be damaged by direct
mechanical impacts. Again, CD's can be rendered useless by surface scratches.
Diskettes are particularly vulnerable to failure: it is not an uncommon
occurrence for reading from, or writing to, a diskette to suddenly become no
longer possible.
Examples
- In a medium-sized company there was a build-up of dust due to building
work. The dust particles found their way to the magnetic disk of the
computer used in that firm, causing a head crash as a result of which some
data was destroyed.
- Faults started inexplicably occurring on the laptop of a field service
employee although the laptop was always transported carefully packed. It
turned out that the hard disk of the laptop had been damaged by a magnet
which was used to secure a folding table on his train.
- During data backup of a multimedia PC, some ZIP diskettes were
temporarily stacked on its speakers. The magnets in the speakers destroyed
parts of the data media.
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000