What is Data Integrity?

Data Integrity is a vital component when identifying risk and has been of increasing importance in recent years, especially with the impending arrival of the EU General Data Protection Regulation in 2018; a time when complete confidence in data will be a legal requirement.

Specifically, it relates to the following in regards to your data:

• Completeness
• Accuracy
• Consistency (otherwise known as validity)
• Maintenance of these elements over a piece of data’s entire life-cycle

Data Integrity is the reverse of data corruption or loss, and there are specific tools that can help improve your Data Integrity.

Whilst Data Integrity might sound similar to Data Security, the former is actually the desired result of the latter.

How can you improve your Data Integrity?

The following are popular ways of improving Data Integrity:

1. Creation of Parent-Child relationships between data sets
2. Creating a standardised Single Customer View (SCV)
3. Ensuring complete and up to date backups are taken
4. Proactive validation and reporting