Certified Fraud Examiner Practice 2025 - Free Practice Questions and Study Guide

Data integrity is the goal of information security that specifically focuses on ensuring that data remains unaltered and accurate over its entire lifecycle. This concept is essential in maintaining trustworthiness in information systems, as it ensures that information has not been tampered with or modified, intentionally or accidentally. Techniques used to achieve data integrity may include checksums, hash functions, and access controls, all designed to verify that data remains consistent and unaltered.

The other options address different aspects of information security: availability pertains to ensuring that data is accessible to authorized users when needed; authentication is concerned with verifying the identity of a user, device, or entity; and non-repudiation involves guaranteeing that a party cannot deny the authenticity of their signature on a document or a message sent. Each of these goals plays a distinct role in securing information systems, but none specifically addresses the preservation of data in its original, unaltered form as data integrity does.