Loss of Digital Data
To be honest, there isn’t much I can say about this threat, and what is there to say? You had valuable electronic data, and then it was gone. What to do in case of loss is often already a philosophical question. In December 1914, a fire completely destroyed the laboratory of American inventor Thomas Edison, and all his manuscripts and blueprints were burned in the flames. Upon learning of the fire, his son Thomas Alva Edison Jr. frantically searched for his father, fearing that he might have suffered a heart attack.
How surprised he was to find his father calmly standing at a safe distance, watching the fire. Thomas asked to bring his wife and said: “Look, in all our lives we have never seen anything like this. This disaster is very useful: all our mistakes have burned away! Thank God, we can start all over again. Start from scratch!”
If you do not find such an approach acceptable, we recommend taking care of creating backups of valuable data in advance. The issue of creating backups with detailed instructions for different operating systems is covered in a separate section of the course; here we will discuss typical mistakes made when creating backups and common causes of digital data loss.
But before we begin, I would like to clarify one linguistic point. A backup is often referred to in our chapter as a backup. This is a calque (barbarism) from the English word backup, meaning reserve, spare, which is actively used in the Russian-speaking professional IT community.
Causes of Information Destruction
Data loss can occur for many reasons, from accidental errors to targeted attacks. Each of them requires understanding to effectively protect your data. Below are the main causes, including both common and less obvious ones, with examples demonstrating their seriousness. These cases show how vulnerabilities in software, hardware failures, human errors, attacks by malicious actors, and new technologies such as AI can lead to the loss of valuable information.
Software Bugs
Software failures are one of the most insidious causes of data loss, as they can occur without user or malicious intervention. Errors in the code of applications, operating systems, or automation scripts can lead to file deletions, database corruption, or loss of access to information. Such failures can be caused by improper data handling, logic errors in the program, or conflicts between updates.
- In 2021, a bug was discovered in the popular gaming client Steam, which caused the installation of the client in the root of drive C (or any other) to delete all user data, including documents and folders, except for system files protected by access rights. Steam was also vulnerable to remote code execution attacks, allowing hackers to run malicious code that could delete data. Advice: separate your gaming and work computers to minimize risks.