G 0.27 Resource Shortage

When available resources in one area are insufficient, this can lead to bottlenecks in the supply of these resources and to overloads and failures. Depending on the type of resources affected, a small event, whose occurrence was moreover foreseeable, can ultimately affect a large number of business processes. Resource shortage can occur in IT operations and communications connections, but also in other areas of an organization. If only insufficient personnel, time, and financial resources are allocated for certain tasks, this can have many negative effects. For example, the required roles in projects may not be filled with suitable people. If operating resources such as hardware or software are no longer sufficient to meet requirements, professional tasks may not be able to be completed successfully.

Often, personnel, time, financial, technical, and other shortcomings can be compensated for in regular operations for a limited period of time. Under high time pressure, however, for example in emergency situations, they become all the more apparent.

Resources can also be intentionally overloaded if someone deliberately generates intensive demand for an operating resource and thereby provokes an intensive and prolonged disruption of the operating resource, see also G 0.40 Prevention of Services (Denial of Service)).

Examples:

• Overloaded electrical lines heat up, which can lead to smoldering fire if laid unfavorably.
• If new applications are operated on the network with a higher bandwidth requirement than was anticipated at the time of planning, this can result in a loss of network availability if the network infrastructure cannot be scaled sufficiently.
• If IT operations sporadically monitors the log files of the IT it manages due to overload, attacks may not be detected in a timely manner.
• Web servers can be so overloaded by a large number of requests arriving simultaneously that regulated access to data becomes almost impossible.
• If a company is in insolvency proceedings, it may happen that there is no money for urgently needed spare parts or that important service providers cannot be paid.