integrity

Ininformation technology, the integrity of data represents its trustworthiness. The data is intact and not altered. Integrity is one of three goals for security. The other two are confidentiality and availability.

The integrity of information requires that it can only be changed by authorized persons in an intended manner and cannot be modified in an unauthorized manner. In the case of message integrity, it can be assumed that the message content is completely identical on the sending and receiving sides. It was neither changed nor manipulated during transmission.

Data integrity can beverified with certain test methods such as the use of hash functions, of Message Authentication Codes( MAC) or with digitalsignatures, because these are directly linked to the message content.

For information systems( IS), integrity refers to the correctness and reliability of the operating system, the hardware used and the security mechanisms implemented in the software, the consistency of the data structure, and the accessibility of the stored data. The integrity of objects is fulfilled by the specification of the objects and by the authorization, if these execute a function correctly.