If the resources available in one area are inadequate, this may also result in supply bottlenecks
with these resources, possibly leading to overload and failures. Depending on the type of
resources affected, a number of business processes may be impaired in the end by a minor
event whose occurrence was also predictable. The lack of resources may occur in IT operations
and communication links, but also in other areas of an organisation. If only inadequate
personnel, time and financial resources are provided for certain tasks, this may have manifold
negative repercussions. For example, the necessary roles in projects may not be staffed with
suitable persons. When operating resources such as hardware or software are no longer
sufficient to meet the requirements, specialised tasks may not be performed successfully
under certain circumstances.
In many cases, compensation can still be made for personnel, scheduling, financial, technical
and other shortcomings during regular operations for a limited period of time. Under serious
time pressure, however, they become all the more apparent, for example in emergency
situations.
Resources can also be overloaded deliberately when somebody generates an intensive demand
for an operating resource provoking an intensive and permanent disturbance of the operating
resource, see also G 0.40 Denial of Service.
Examples:
• Overloaded electrical cables heat up, which may result in a smouldering fire if they are
routed in an unfavourable manner.
• If new applications are operated on the network which have higher bandwidth
requirements than those taken into consideration in the planning phase, this may
result in a loss of availability of the entire network if it is no longer possible to
sufficiently scale the network infrastructure.
• When the administrators check the log files of the IT supported by them only
sporadically due to their high workload, it may be possible that attacks are only
detected when it is too late.
• Web servers may be overloaded by a large number of simultaneously submitted queries
to the point where normal access to the database becomes almost impossible.
• If a company is subject to insolvency proceedings, it may be that there is no money for
urgently needed spare parts or that important service providers cannot be paid.