Integrity is a security attribute for data determining its accuracy and trustworthiness. Data owners need their data to be kept consistent between changes, and to be able to prevent changes made by unauthorised parties. Data that keeps its state between any such changes being made is considered to keep its state of integrity. Any change for other reasons, including changes made due to hardware error, or when data is being transmitted, is a violation of integrity.
Hashing allows for integrity to be evaluated by looking at whether the hash value given to a file has changed. Data which is in its original state does not change its resulting hash value.
Integrity is one of the original attributes of the CIA model.
Last updated: 8 October 2017