Threat: Loss of Data

We all understand theft: One moment you have something and the next, you don’t. In fact, theft is just loss combined with malicious intent. As examples of nonmalicious loss, sometimes we accidentally delete the wrong file, a system failure causes a file to become corrupted, we overwrite a good file with a bad one, or we simply put the file somewhere and then cannot remember where or under what name. In all these cases, data (including perhaps a program) become unavailable, thereby denying access to or productive use of the data.

Malicious loss does carry one additional threat, in that not only do you not have access to your data, someone else does, meaning that the confidentiality of that data is now potentially in peril. You may not know the thief’s objective, that is, whether the thief wants your data or merely the computer. Unfortunately, not knowing the objective, you must assume the worst, that the thief wants your data.