Following the loss of the personal records of some 25 million child benefit recipients by Her Majesty"s Revenue & Customs this month, the UK government will be acutely aware of how quickly mismanagement of technology can lead to serious problems. While technology wasn"t to blame per se in the HMRC data loss, there are plenty of recorded examples where faulty hardware and software have cost the organisations concerned dearly, both financially and in terms of reputation -- and resulted in some near misses for the public.
Here"s our considered list of some of the worst IT-related disasters and failures. The order is subjective -- with number one being the worst -- so feel free to comment using the Talkback facility below if you disagree or have suggestions for disasters we may have missed.