Data Integrity

Data integrity is a very broad term, which refers to the maintenance of data in its entire life-cycle, from physically storing the data safely, to maintaining the accuracy and consistency of the values of the data. Any unintended changes to data as the result of a storage, retrieval or processing operation, including malicious intent, unexpected hardware failure, and human error, is failure of data integrity.  Therefore the term has widely different meanings depending on the specific context – even under the same general umbrella of computing.

Another way of thinking of Data Integrity is as the opposite of data corruption.

Data integrity is not to be confused with data security, the discipline of protecting data from unauthorized parties. Even though a breach of data security can lead to data corruption.

Examples of failures in Data Integrity can be:

• A single pixel in an image appearing a different color than was originally recorded
• Mislabeling a picture of a “cat” as “dog 
• Loss of vacation pictures
• Deleting a business-critical database
• Markin medicine with the wrong expiration date.

‍