See also: Security | Performance
Undivided and complete. In computers, referring to a file or data stream that is not changed in any way from the original. Integrity is a measure of security performance.
Information cannot retain its integrity if it has been spoofed or falsified in any way, regardless or not there is someone who believes a thing is said to be true, including yourself. Without integrity doubt and skeptisicm are introduced. If something is prone to error or attack it may be vulnerable or unreliable and become less popular.
Secure communications require that messages and data have not been altered, so that the message received are identical to the one that was sent. To make accurate decisions from trusted, users need to be confident that their data has not been modified since its creation.
Integrity-checking methods
- Audits
- Checksums
- Hash systems
- Digital signatures – a personalized hash, only creatable by one person
- Digital fingerprint – a hash of a public key – private key pair, verifying a digital signature. They are often used as terms for other hash systems.
- BitTorrent – a system for checking individual portions of a file as they download for accuracy, discarding incorrect portions, rather than the entire file. These files can also act as Hash files.
- Intrusion Detection Systems
Integrity is also an important facet of data backup and many archiving tools self-check for integrity upon decompression.
Related Topics
TakeDown.NET -> “Integrity”