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Managing Information Integrity

Information integrity is what determines if the information is in the original form it was in as it was being created and getting stored in a database. If the information has been saved in a certain format and has been unused for a long duration of time, the state it will be after a while compared to the original state of the information is what is known as information integrity.

Information integrity determines whether the information can be used and whenever the integrity of the information cannot be verified, then its integrity is still in question. This is the reason many applications that are designed for businesses that are dealing with information that needs all its properties preserved will ensure that the integrity of the information is given a top priority with all the properties of the information taken into account.

Checksums are some of the features of looking into the integrity of information and are used for passwords and other properties of information which tend to change very slightly when they are not stored in the proper order. For instance, an application that has been designed or developed incorrectly will store integers as doubles or longs and this will affect the integrity of the information since the application will be taking in and accepting the incorrect types of data.

Taking alphabets where numbers are supposed to be placed is another instance where the integrity of the information is not given any attention and the application will be unable to process this information if its integrity has been tampered with. The integrity of information for any system or application is what determines the quality of services provided by the application and whether the system is reliable and can be used for a business application, an enterprise, or an organization that needs to deal with a lot of information.

The integrity of information for the application is managed by ensuring that the data type of the information being entered on the forms is the same as what was coded into the system. If numbers need to go in a certain data field, then characters should be filtered out and in this way, the program gets to carry out what it was originally intended to do. Without the integrity of the information getting into a system being confirmed, then anyone can feed garbage into the system and it will still accept it which means that a system that does not have proper information integrity cannot safeguard against being fed the wrong kind of data.

A system that does not accept such details getting into the wrong places has all the information integrity checks in place and will often verify whether the user is entering the correct information into the forms provided, rising flags when the user has not given out the correct details. The length of the information being entered into a system is also a useful factor for determining its integrity and the proper checks at the application level ensure a system works with the correct information intended for it.