What Is Data Integrity? Your Complete Guide

• Trust: Reliable data is necessary for sound decision-making. Compromised data quality can derail activities in every corner of your operation. Whether you’re analyzing sales trends, preparing financial or production forecasts, or evaluating a patient’s medical history, you need to know that your inputs are valid.

• Damaged customer relations: Your customers expect you to keep their sensitive data safe and whole. Failure to do so can torpedo your business’s reputation in one shot.

Customers affected by data issues (e.g., inflated billings, inaccurate diagnoses) often leave for good, while potential new consumers hesitate to trust a company with a track record of data problems.

• Compliance: Modern organizations must comply with a range of regulations governing data safekeeping. Failure to comply can have serious legal implications, including fines, censure, lawsuits, and even a revocation of your license.

These are the major regulatory frameworks:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (for organizations operating in Europe).
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This protects card payment information from theft and abuse.

• Security: Strong data integrity is key to combating cyber threats. It prevents hackers from tampering with files or altering records. It also makes it harder for attackers to hide malware inside trusted files because mechanisms are in place to detect suspicious changes.

• Business continuity: If you suffer a system failure or disaster event, a robust backup lets you recover your databases and resume normal service ASAP.

Without data integrity, your backups could be compromised. The consequences? You can’t access essential information, serve customers, or complete transactions. Your business grinds into downtime, where every minute costs you money. An Oxford Economics report shows the global cost of downtime is $400 billion a year.

• Lost data advantage: Business data has tremendous value in our information age. For many companies, data represents their most valuable asset. Organizations use data to make better decisions, reach their customers more effectively, and gain a competitive edge. All of these advantages disappear when your data becomes tainted.

• Human error: By some estimates, human errors cause 95% of integrity compromises. You’ve probably experienced one or more of these scenarios:
  • Accidental file deletion – An employee pushes the wrong button or deletes information without understanding its value. Or they skip proper handling procedures out of carelessness or ignorance.
  • Incorrect data entry – Inputting the wrong figures, dates, or codes.
  • System misconfiguration – Setting up software or databases incorrectly.
  • Weak password practices – Using simple or repeated passwords that make accounts easy to hack.
  • Falling for phishing scams – Clicking on a fake email and unknowingly providing login details or launching malware.

The good news is that appropriate staff training can go a long way to mitigate these risks.

• Malware and ransomware: Malware is malicious software designed to damage or steal data, or gain unauthorized access. Ransomware is a type of malware that locks or encrypts files and holds them “hostage” until a ransom is paid. You’ll appreciate that both of these attacks impede data integrity.

• Insider threats: While cyber threats are a clear and understood danger, companies shouldn’t ignore insider risks. Disgruntled employees, managers, or contractors sometimes damage or steal sensitive data.

Insider threats can be harder to detect because perpetrators often know their way around the system and usually have legitimate access.

• Transmission errors: Data can be corrupted during transfer between systems due to network issues or flawed transfer protocols. Detection techniques like checksums or data validation help to limit this issue.

• Migration errors: Migrating data from one system or platform to another runs the risk of errors such as:
  • Formatting issues – Differences in data structures between the source and target systems cause quality and accuracy problems.
  • Integration problems – Incompatible software or system configurations result in missing or duplicated data.
  • Corruption – Files may become damaged during transfer.
  • Theft or loss in transit – Data can be intercepted or lost if not properly secured during migration.

• Hardware failures: A failing hard drive or a server malfunction can lead to corruption or loss. Over time, even healthy storage devices can experience bit rot. This refers to the gradual decay of data on disks or memory that erodes its integrity.

• Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks: MitM attacks occur when a bad actor intercepts a communication between two parties and manipulates the information before passing it along. For example, a criminal could change banking details on an invoice to redirect payment to their account.