CIPT (Certified Information Privacy Technologist) Practice

Which of the following best defines "data integrity"?

1. The protection of data from unauthorized access

2. The accuracy and consistency of data over its lifecycle

3. The ability to retrieve data quickly and efficiently

4. The storage of data in secure locations

The correct answer is: The accuracy and consistency of data over its lifecycle

Data integrity primarily refers to the accuracy and consistency of data throughout its lifecycle. This encompasses the processes and practices that ensure data remains reliable and unaltered during its creation, storage, transmission, and processing. Maintaining data integrity is crucial for ensuring that the information can be trusted and utilized for decision-making. In practical terms, this involves implementing validation measures, checksums, or error-correcting codes to detect and correct any changes that may occur accidentally or intentionally, due to corruption or unauthorized access. Ensuring data integrity also implies that stakeholders can rely on the data to be a true representation of the source it was gathered from, thus avoiding any costly mistakes that could arise from using erroneous data. While other options touch on important aspects of data management and security, they do not directly define data integrity. For instance, protecting data from unauthorized access primarily relates to data security, whereas the ability to retrieve data quickly pertains to performance and data retrieval efficiency. The storage of data in secure locations also speaks more to security rather than integrity, as it focuses on the safety of the data rather than its accuracy or consistency.