design or condition where the failure or overloading of a component or system transfers demand or function to another, usually identical, unit. Systems designed for fail over are usually arranged with multiple units in sequence.
automatic protection of programs and/or processing systems to maintain safety when a hardware or software failure is detected in a system. The overriding principle is that failure of one part or component will not result in the failure or termination of the system as a whole. In terms of security, fail safe is sometimes seen as a tendency to fail open: failure of access controls, for example, will ensure that access continues to be granted sometimes even to those to whom it should not be granted. Compare with fail secure.
in the event of a failure of a part or component of the system, the system itself will terminate or fail, rather than suffer any loss of security. Compare with fail safe.
pertaining to the selective termination of affected nonessential processing when a hardware or software failure is detected in a system. The term graceful degradation is sometimes used.
unauthorized and usually inadvertent access to data resulting from a hardware or software failure in the system
method used to detect and provide fail safe or fail soft recovery from hardware and software failures in a system
error condition where a subject, object, or operation is accepted...
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