Short for
single point of failure, a generic phrase for any
component of a system that upon failure will cause a malfunction in the entire system. A SPOF can be a hardware or electrical component or a software component.
Each time a system expands (e.g., adding a workstation to a network or adding a new application to a network of workstations) the number of places where an SPOF can occur also expands. Typically, systems with redundancy will still operate with an SPOF.
