What are two objectives of ensuring data integrity? (Choose two.)

Data is available all the time.
Data is unaltered during transit.
Access to the data is authenticated.
Data is not changed by unauthorized entities.
Data is encrypted while in transit and when stored on disks.

The two objectives of ensuring data integrity are:

Data is unaltered during transit.
Data is not changed by unauthorized entities.

1. Data is Unaltered During Transit

Ensuring that data remains unaltered during transit is a crucial objective in maintaining data integrity. This means that when data is transmitted from one system or entity to another, it must arrive exactly as it was sent, without any modification or corruption. This is important because data integrity breaches can occur due to various reasons, including cyberattacks, accidental corruption, or technical failures during the transmission process.

Importance of Data Integrity in Transit

In today’s digital world, where vast amounts of data are transmitted over networks, whether through email, file transfers, or cloud services, the risk of data being altered in transit is significant. When data is altered during transmission, it can lead to a range of issues, such as incorrect information being processed, unauthorized access, or even security vulnerabilities. This is particularly critical in fields like finance, healthcare, and government, where accurate data transfer is vital for decision-making and security.

Mechanisms to Ensure Data Integrity in Transit

There are several mechanisms and technologies used to ensure that data remains unaltered during transit:

Checksum Algorithms: A checksum is a calculated value that is used to verify the integrity of a file or data. When data is transmitted, a checksum value is created based on the content of the data. Upon reaching its destination, the recipient calculates the checksum again to ensure that it matches the value generated before transmission. If the checksum values match, it indicates that the data was not altered during transit.
Hash Functions: Hashing is a method of transforming data into a fixed-size string of characters, which acts as a digital fingerprint for the data. Hash functions such as SHA-256 or MD5 are commonly used in network communications to ensure data integrity. Before transmitting data, the sender generates a hash of the data and sends it along with the data. The recipient can then hash the received data and compare it to the original hash to verify that the data was not altered in transit.
Digital Signatures: Digital signatures offer a more advanced form of ensuring data integrity by using asymmetric cryptography. A digital signature is a cryptographic method that ensures both the authenticity and integrity of a message or document. When a sender transmits data, they sign it with their private key, and the recipient can verify the signature with the sender’s public key. This ensures that the data has not been tampered with during transit and also authenticates the identity of the sender.
Transport Layer Security (TLS): TLS is a protocol that ensures secure and encrypted communication between two parties. While encryption is its primary goal, TLS also plays a role in ensuring data integrity during transit. TLS includes mechanisms for verifying that data has not been altered during transmission, ensuring its integrity from the sender to the receiver.

Real-World Applications

In the healthcare industry, the integrity of patient records is critical. When transmitting sensitive health information between medical providers or insurers, it is essential to ensure that the data is not altered, either accidentally or maliciously. If medical data were to be changed during transit, it could lead to incorrect diagnoses, improper treatments, or breaches of patient privacy.

In financial institutions, ensuring data integrity in transit is equally important. Altered or corrupted data during transactions can lead to significant financial losses, fraudulent activities, or exposure of sensitive financial details. Thus, robust measures are taken to ensure that transmitted financial data is not tampered with.

2. Data is Not Changed by Unauthorized Entities

The second critical objective of ensuring data integrity is preventing unauthorized entities from altering the data. Unauthorized modifications to data can result from malicious attacks, internal mistakes, or system failures. If unauthorized individuals gain access to critical data, they can change or corrupt it, leading to severe consequences, including data breaches, financial loss, or system compromise.

Significance of Protecting Against Unauthorized Changes

Data is often considered one of the most valuable assets for businesses and individuals alike. Whether it’s intellectual property, financial records, or personal information, ensuring that unauthorized entities cannot modify this data is vital to maintaining the trust and security of the systems handling it.

Unauthorized changes to data can compromise not only the data’s integrity but also the organization’s overall security. Cybercriminals often attempt to gain unauthorized access to systems to modify data for various malicious purposes, including fraud, espionage, and sabotage. Preventing these unauthorized changes is therefore crucial to maintaining a secure data environment.

Mechanisms to Protect Data from Unauthorized Entities

Access Control Mechanisms: One of the most effective ways to prevent unauthorized changes to data is through the use of access control mechanisms. These mechanisms ensure that only authorized users or systems can modify the data. Access control mechanisms can be role-based, where users are assigned specific privileges based on their role in the organization, or discretionary, where data owners decide who can access or modify the data.
Authentication and Authorization: Authentication ensures that only legitimate users can access data, and authorization controls what actions they are allowed to perform. By enforcing strict authentication measures, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), organizations can reduce the risk of unauthorized entities gaining access to their systems. Authorization then determines what each user is allowed to do, ensuring that only authorized users can make changes to critical data.
Data Encryption with Integrity Checks: Encrypting data ensures that even if unauthorized entities gain access to it, they will not be able to modify it without detection. Encryption combined with integrity checks, such as digital signatures or hash-based message authentication codes (HMACs), can further protect data from being altered by unauthorized parties.
Immutable Logs and Audits: Using immutable logs to record all data access and modification activities is another essential practice. By creating unchangeable logs of who accessed and modified the data, organizations can detect unauthorized changes and investigate them. Auditing these logs regularly ensures that any tampering with data is identified and dealt with in a timely manner.

Examples of Unauthorized Data Changes and Their Impact

In 2021, a ransomware attack targeted a major U.S. pipeline company, causing a shutdown of the pipeline’s operations. One of the primary objectives of ransomware attacks is to gain unauthorized access to critical data and systems. Once inside, attackers encrypt or modify data to disrupt operations and demand a ransom in exchange for restoring the data’s integrity. This attack illustrated the devastating consequences of unauthorized changes to data, as it led to fuel shortages and economic disruption.

In another case, unauthorized changes to data in a healthcare organization’s system led to the incorrect modification of patient records. This not only jeopardized patient safety but also exposed the organization to legal liability and reputational damage.

Conclusion

Data integrity plays a critical role in ensuring the reliability, security, and accuracy of data, especially when it is transmitted across networks or stored in systems. By ensuring that data is unaltered during transit and not changed by unauthorized entities, organizations can maintain the trustworthiness of their data, mitigate risks, and safeguard sensitive information from tampering or corruption. Implementing strong security measures, such as encryption, access controls, and authentication mechanisms, is essential to achieving these objectives and ensuring a robust defense against both accidental and malicious data integrity breaches.