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The information security manager of an e-commerce company receives an alert over the weekend that all the servers in a datacenter have gone offline. Upon discussing this situation with the facilities manager, the information security manager learns there was planned electrical maintenance.

The information security manager is upset at not being part of the maintenance planning, as this could have resulted in a loss of:

A. data confidentiality
B. data security
C. PCI compliance
D. business availability

1 Answer

1 vote

Final answer:

The unplanned outage at the e-commerce company's datacenter, due to a lack of communication about maintenance, primarily resulted in the loss of business availability, impacting the company's operational continuity and service to customers.

Step-by-step explanation:

The information security manager of an e-commerce company is rightly concerned about the unscheduled datacenter outage due to planned electrical maintenance that they weren't informed about. The correct answer to what could have been lost due to the servers going offline is D. business availability. Data confidentiality and security are certainly critical, but without any indication that data was accessed or tampered with, these do not directly apply in this situation. PCI compliance is important but, again, this primarily concerns the security of payment card data and unless that data was compromised during the maintenance, it is not the immediate concern due to the outage. Instead, business availability is most affected here, as the ability for customers to access the e-commerce platform and for the company to carry out transactions was disrupted.

Online privacy and security are significant organizational concerns, with high-profile data breaches highlighting the costly and chaotic impact of security failures. However, in the case of planned electrical maintenance leading to server outages, the primary concern is operational continuity rather than a data breach scenario. The importance of proper communication between departments in a company is illustrated here, particularly when a lack thereof can lead to unexpected interruptions in service availability that can affect a company's operations and revenue.

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