What is Data Integrity and Why is it Important?

Data has never been more important in every part of the world around us. However, while you might think you have good-quality data, do you have data integrity, too?

Data integrity refers to efforts that keep data accurate, reliable, and consistent at all times, no matter how it’s stored, collected, and used. With so many variables around that can affect integrity in cyber security and volumes of data expanding all the time, the importance of data integrity to smooth business operations will only rise in the months and years ahead.

So, how does this work in practice, and how can you ensure your data integrity is the best it possibly can be? This article looks at the benefits of data integrity, the risks, and how to maintain it in the long term.

How does data integrity work?

In practice, data integrity is maintained through using databases, which are subject to a range of measures and safeguards. These measures are implemented and enforced by different solutions, depending on the types of data and what it is needed for. These include systems for supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).

It’s important to distinguish between the two types of data integrity, both of which are vital for realizing the maximum potential of data:

Physical integrity

Physical integrity refers to keeping data complete and correct when it’s stored and retrieved and protecting it from any tangible hazards. These can include the erosion of servers and hard drives, natural disasters affecting the geographical location of the data, power interruptions, and hackers disrupting the functions of databases.

Logical integrity

Logical integrity covers the less tangible side, ensuring that data isn’t changed as it’s used. This includes entity integrity, which prevents data duplication; domain integrity, which ensures accuracy; referential integrity, which ensures proper storage and usage; and user-defined integrity, where rules and restrictions are applied to ensure data is used appropriately and for its intended purposes.

What are the benefits of data integrity?

Without data integrity, the full value of data cannot be realized in about every data use case you can think of, such as:

Product/service quality

With data integrity, end-users and customers receive the service they expect, whether that’s accessing their financial statements on a finance app or receiving personalized recommendations on clothes to buy from a fashion retailer. All of this is vital for maximizing customer trust and confidence, both in the organization itself and in their ability to handle data properly. At a time when it’s never been easier to shop around and switch to competitors, this can make a real difference to the bottom line or the overall success of an application.

Safety and privacy for users

Many types of data are extremely sensitive, such as patient records handled by healthcare bodies or financial data stored and processed by banking firms. Additionally, the public is more aware of data protection and utilization than ever before and expects businesses and organizations to keep information safe. Data integrity measures that keep data accurate and consistent ensure vital safety.

Fewer mistakes and errors

Data integrity issues often creep in through simple human errors. These can range from miskeying information into a database, entering inaccurate information, duplicating data that’s already there, or working in contravention of agreed data protocols and procedures. This can be through a lack of experience, lack of care, or simply by accident, but they are all errors that data integrity can root out at the source.

Smooth operational workflows

When data integrity isn’t in place, business processes don’t run as quickly and smoothly as they should. Additionally, it can take time, money, and effort to rectify problems, which can lead to further disruption. As a result, taking proactive steps to ensure data integrity can have a big impact on keeping everything running seamlessly.

Stronger compliance with regulations

Many industries have strict legal requirements in place around how data is collected, stored, and handled, such as finance and healthcare - and that’s before considering wider rules such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Data integrity can help organizations meet these requirements and make it easier to demonstrate integrity and transparency to regulators, auditors, and other stakeholders, further enhancing the organization’s reputation.

What’s the difference between data integrity and data quality?

Data integrity vs. data quality is a common misconception, and as they’re so closely interlinked, it’s important to distinguish between the two. Data integrity on its own refers to a data’s accuracy and consistency over its lifecycle and keeping it in its original state without any unauthorized changes. Data quality, on the other hand, is about how the likes of accuracy, completeness, and accessibility serve the intended purpose of the data.

What are the biggest data integrity risks?

Across collection, storage, and transfer, there are always risks that data integrity will be compromised, whether that means data is lost, stolen, damaged, or modified. Key risks to watch out for include:

Human error

As mentioned, human error can lead to data integrity being compromised. Furthermore, if humans don’t realize that they’ve made mistakes or decide not to report them for fear of reprisals or losing their jobs, these innocuous mistakes can have wide-reaching consequences for a long time.

Cyberattacks

The risk of cybercrime is increasing all the time, with attacks of ever-greater sophistication targeting databases with the intent of seizing, disrupting, or destroying the information within. The consequences of a successful attack can be operational (if data is unavailable or corrupted), reputational (if information about the breach enters the public domain), and financial (if the organization is held to ransom over the data and/or if the business is lost as a result of the disruption). the disruption).

Data transfer issues

Data can become corrupted when being transferred from one place to another, and this can often happen between database locations, i.e. when data appears in destination tables but not source tables. When these incidents occur, the damage can often be substantial and can be time-consuming to rectify.

Malfunctioning hardware

Similar to the previous point, hardware that isn’t working well can render data damaged or inaccessible. This can be through aging devices that can no longer cope with the workloads being asked of them.

Data redundancy

If data is no longer required within a database, it is simply getting in the way and complicating the processes around data management. Furthermore, if that data is taken into account when conducting analysis, it may lead to inaccuracies in results that fundamentally undermine the integrity of all the data involved.

Poor database design

It’s essential that databases are properly structured to maintain data integrity and reduce the risk of errors and mismatches being introduced unintentionally. While database designs may be fit for purpose initially, this may not necessarily be the case as data volumes scale upwards and new information is integrated.

How to ensure data integrity

There are several practical and technical steps you can take to ensure that your data integrity is maintained for years to come. None of them are catch-all solutions on their own, but a combination of all of them will stand you in good stead:

Backups

Backing up data on a regular basis is a fundamental part of security best practices in general. However, it has particular value when ensuring data integrity, as it minimizes the risk of any data being permanently lost through unforeseen events. The more often data is backed up, the lower the level of risk; this also helps reduce the impact of any ransomware attacks as organizations have recent backup data to switch to instead.

Encryption and access control

Nobody should have access to data that doesn’t need to. That’s why keeping data encrypted and tightening up access controls, are a crucial part of maintaining data integrity. A good way forward is a ‘zero trust’ approach where all access is considered unauthorized until a user can prove otherwise through their credentials. This minimizes the risk of bad actors impersonating users, hacking into systems, and gaining access to data for their own malicious ends.

Verification and validation

Verifying and validating data is essential for ensuring that it’s accurate, especially when it comes from sources that are unknown, or that haven’t previously demonstrated reliability around data accuracy. Validation ensures that data meets pre-defined criteria at the point when it’s entered, while verification processes ensure that the data continues to meet that criterion in the long term - including when criteria and data use cases change.

Deduplication

Removing any duplicated data isn’t just important from an operational standpoint - it’s a key security process, too. All too often, information within secure databases is duplicated into unsecured places like documents, spreadsheets, and even emails. Removing the unsecured versions keeps sensitive data within the boundaries of the organization’s security measures.

Training and education

Good cybersecurity starts with people, and those handling large quantities of data on a day-to-day basis need to know what they should do to maintain data integrity. Regular cybersecurity training keeps them up to date, helps them understand the typical sources of data integrity issues, and helps establish a framework for best practices and data integrity protocols.

Regular audits

When a data integrity issue does arise, getting to the bottom of it quickly, can make a real difference to minimizing the impact and ensuring that it can’t happen again. Having strong reporting procedures and a good audit trail in place makes it faster and easier to retrace the steps of affected data. This can help security teams pinpoint the where, when, how, and why of the incident - and hopefully the who, as well.

Strong security solutions

All of the above should be combined with the latest and most robust security solutions available, which can swing into action immediately when an issue like malware or unauthorized access arises. Kaspersky Security for Endpoint is designed to prevent unauthorized access, defend against malware, and ensure data integrity across endpoints and storage systems.

Related Articles:

• Data Leakage: How to Prevent Data Breaches
• What is Security Awareness Training?
• Ransomware Protection: How to Keep Your Data Safe

Related Products:

• Kaspersky Endpoint Security
• Kaspersky Cyber Security Training
• Kaspersky Next