The integrity of information may be impaired for different reasons, e.g. manipulations, errors caused by people, incorrect use of applications, malfunctions of software or transmission errors.

• Information can be lost due to the ageing of the data media.
• Transmission errors: these can occur when transmitting data.
• Malware: this can be used to change or destroy entire databases.
• Entering the wrong data: this can trigger unwanted transactions, which often go unnoticed for a long time.
• Attackers can attempt to manipulate data for other purposes, e.g. to gain access to other IT systems or databases.
• Manipulation of the index database of an electronic archive can cause it to archive the wrong documents or to archive or retrieve falsified documents.

When the integrity of information is violated, a number of problems can arise:

• In the simplest case, it may just be impossible to read the information, which means it cannot be processed either.
• Data can be accidentally or deliberately falsified and lead to the disclosure of incorrect information. As a result of this, electronic bank transfers may contain the wrong amount, be sent to the wrong recipient, the sender address of emails could be manipulated, or many other kinds of problems could arise.
• If the integrity of encrypted or compressed records is lost (this only takes a change to a single bit), it may be impossible to decrypt or unpack the records under certain circumstances.
• The same also applies to cryptographic keys, i.e. changing just one bit in a key makes the key unusable. In turn, this could then make it impossible to decrypt the data or check its authenticity.
• Documents stored in electronic archives are not considered conclusive evidence when the integrity of the documents cannot be verified.

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  Copyright by Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (https://www.bsi.bund.de/)