G 0.17 Loss of equipment, data carriers or documents

There are a variety of causes that can lead to the loss of equipment, data carriers and documents. This directly affects availability, but can also result in confidential information falling into the wrong hands if the data carriers are not fully encrypted. The replacement of equipment or data carriers incurs costs, but even if these are recovered, information can be disclosed or unwanted programs can be installed.

Mobile end devices and mobile data carriers in particular can easily be lost. Huge amounts of data can be stored on small memory cards today. However, it also happens repeatedly that documents in paper form are accidentally left behind, for example in restaurants or means of transport.

Examples:

• Employees use their journey to work on the train to review some documents. As they rush to exit at their destination stop, they accidentally leave the papers on the neighboring seat. While the documents are not confidential, as a result several signatures from senior executives must be obtained again.
• At a large event, an employee accidentally and unnoticed drops a memory card with confidential calculations from his briefcase while searching. The person who found the memory card reviews the content on his laptop and sells the information to the competition.
• A company sends CDs with software updates for bug fixes by mail to its customers. Some of these CDs are lost in the mail without the company or customers being informed. As a result, affected customers experience software malfunctions.