Assuring system data integrity-an overview

Abstract

John K. AkesonBell Communications Research (Bellcore) 6 Corporate Place (PYA 1E-202) Piscataway, NJ 08854Data corruption and compromises in system data integrity can result from human error, fraudulent data manipulation, system malfunction, or environmental mishap. Because system users are very dependent on data integrity, it is important to be aware of methods and techniques for detecting, preventing, and recovering from these problems. There are many approaches for doing so. Data can be protected from intentional corruption through the enforcement of system and network access security; however, despite effective access security, some problems occur through unavoidable security breaches. Other integrity problems are not related to access security.This paper describes ways of dealing with all of the aforementioned problems involving data corruption and compromises in data integrity. Emphasis is placed on three general approaches: (1) building in system quality for preventing certain of these problems, (2) placing routines into data systems for detecting problems that can not be prevented, and (3) designing functionality into these systems for recovering from compromised integrity.