Data Integrity

https://blog.synology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/03-01.jpg

 

As the focus of this discussion, the Information Security Edition of the 2021 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report was selected.

As more content becomes digital only ranging from documents, images, or entire organizations which exist without a physical building, the integrity of this digitized content increases in importance. One of the key areas identified within the report was on preserving data authenticity and data integrity (EDUCAUSE, 2021). The attacks on integrity come from many vectors including malicious personnel, well-meaning personnel, bug-riddled applications, or even bit-rot (2021). Organizations are going to need to put more effort and focus into protecting the integrity of the data which forms the basis of their operations, profitability, or even evidence of compliance in areas such as government regulations.

Companies will need to adopt or implement technologies which actively work against passive or unintentional means of integrity loss. These methods would include backups, monitoring storage media health and enforcing a hardware lifecycle management strategy for storage media and devices. Organizations will also need to put in active integrity protections and alerting. Tools such as auditing, read-only access privileges for those who do not need to modify data, and strong access controls will all help to protect data.

 Additionally, technologies must be developed or streamlined which aid personnel in understanding if the data they are accessing has its integrity intact or if it has been compromised. Current approaches such as expecting individuals to compute and compare a hashing-sum to a published number is not realistic. Furthermore, older approaches such as utilizing MD5 have already been proven to be vulnerable to attack and two different PDF documents can return the same hash which results in integrity being lost. Perhaps blockchains or other non-reputable information sources can be leveraged as a way to automatically check and associate files with recorded hashes whenever the content is accessed. As awareness of the consequences of data integrity begins to increase among non-technical personnel and the public, demand will spur innovation and provide a much more accessible means to receiving for viewing assurance that the data being accessed is legitimate.

 

References

  

Butcher, M. (2021). Backed by Vint Cerf, Emortal wants to protect your digital legacy from ‘bit-rot’.

 

 2021 EDUCAUSE horizon report® | Information security edition. (n.d.). Library | EDUCAUSE. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2021/2/2021-educause-horizon-report-information-security-edition

 

Gauravaram, P., Kelsey, J., Knudsen, L. R., & Thomsen, S. (2010). On hash functions using checksums. International Journal of Information Security, 9(2), 137-151. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10207-009-0100-7