ITPEC FE Subject A October 2024 Question 11
Topic: System Component
Which of the following is a fail-safe concept for improving the security and reliability of the information system?
Explanation
The system stops safely when a device fails — fail-safe accepts that failures happen and makes the system fall into a safe state to minimise damage.
Four reliability design ideas are easily confused:
- •Fail-safe: on failure, move to the safe side, usually by stopping (a broken railway signal shows red)
- •Fault tolerance: keep the required functions of the whole system running despite a partial fault, typically through redundancy
- •Fail-soft: keep running with reduced functions after a fault
- •Fool-proof: design so that a user's wrong operation cannot cause a problem
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) — preventing trouble from incorrect user operation is fool-proof
- •(b) — maintaining the required functions despite a partial fault is fault tolerance
- •(d) — continuing processing by switching to a standby system is failover, a redundancy technique that serves fault tolerance
Key rule: Fail-safe puts safety before availability (stop safely); fault tolerance and fail-soft put continued operation first; fool-proof targets human error.
System Component · AI-written, may contain errors
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