How To Ensure Data Integrity

You can ensure data integrity in your organization by enabling data encryption, investing in a password manager, regularly backing up your data and implementing strict access controls. Data integrity ensures that your data is accurate and complete, meaning it hasn’t been changed, removed or stolen by an unauthorized user.

Continue reading to learn why data integrity is important and how your organization can ensure your data is accurate, complete and consistent.

The importance of data integrity

An organization must ensure data integrity to make valid decisions, comply with regulations and avoid major financial losses. If your organization makes data-driven decisions with incomplete or inaccurate information, you risk losing a significant amount of money and time spent on correcting mistakes in your data. Some factors that could influence your organization’s data integrity include human error, format inconsistencies, improper collection and data breaches. Without proper data integrity, you jeopardize the internal and external security of your organization.

How organizations can ensure data integrity

There are many ways you can ensure the integrity of your organization’s data.

1. Enable data encryption

Data encryption turns readable data into unreadable ciphertext, protecting it from unauthorized access. Ciphertext is encrypted data that no one can read, as it is a series of random letters and numbers, unless they have an encryption key. For example, if a data breach occurs, encrypted data will remain inaccessible without an encryption key. Enabling data encryption within your organization will keep your data confidential, secure and available only to those who should have access to it.

2. Invest in a password manager

A business password manager helps protect your organization’s data from cyber attacks by ensuring your employees use strong passwords. Since human error is a serious threat to data integrity, a password manager eliminates the risk of your employees creating weak passwords or storing them in unsafe locations. A business password manager like Keeper^® features a built-in password generator that produces random and strong passwords, and all passwords are protected in an encrypted digital vault. It’s important for your business to use a password manager because it helps enforce strong password rules and allows for safe sharing of passwords among employees. When employees have strong password hygiene, it reduces the chances of your organization suffering a data breach, thereby protecting data integrity.

3. Back up data regularly

While backing up your data frequently is a good practice in case your device gets lost or stolen, it is also beneficial to perform regular backups to ensure data integrity. As an organization, you should make sure your employees’ data is backed up regularly so all collected data is protected, accurate and complete. For example, suppose one employee’s data is not backed up, and they have made a significant impact on your organization. In that case, your organizational data will not reflect their influence and this inaccuracy could negatively affect your data integrity. Additionally, if your employees’ data is not backed up and your organization suffers a data breach, your organization could lose a significant amount of data and potentially be unable to recover it. Losing data can be easily prevented by backing up your data regularly, which is a practice every employee at your organization should follow to ensure data integrity.

4. Keep an audit trail

An audit trail keeps a record of who accesses and modifies your data. Keeping an audit trail is beneficial for ensuring data integrity by monitoring for suspicious activity or identifying potential data breaches. Your organization can use an audit trail to track the source of a data breach because you will know who accessed the data and when. By having a detailed record of all actions and activities related to your organization’s data, you have a more accurate collection of data that can be used to make more informed decisions and protect your organization’s privacy.

5. Implement strict access controls

Implementing strict access controls in your organization helps protect data integrity by limiting who has access to it. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) ensures your organization gives access only to employees who need it to do their jobs, reducing the risk of data breaches.

To further secure sensitive data, such as financial information and IT accounts, a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution like KeeperPAM can be used. KeeperPAM protects your organization from cyber attacks and simplifies your IT department’s tasks by managing sessions, access controls, secrets and login credentials.

6. Always validate and verify your data

Checking that your data is correct and accurate is one of the most important parts of ensuring data integrity. Your data needs to undergo data validation before being used or processed, so your organization must ensure your data is consistent with any rules, standards or criteria. In addition to validating your data, your organization should implement data verification checks, which involve reviewing the accuracy of the data before using or processing it. For example, if you have a spreadsheet filled with phone numbers and the dates that your organization called those phone numbers, verify that each phone number matches the date and that each phone number has been entered correctly. It is especially important to verify your organization’s data if you are obtaining it from another source because you don’t want your data to have changed during transfer from one party to another.

7. Educate employees on data security

An organization is nothing without its hard-working employees, which is why it is essential to prioritize their education and training in data-security best practices. Data integrity can be strengthened by your organization if you teach employees how to protect their data and the organization’s overall privacy. Your organization should have guidelines on how to use data, how often employees need to back up their data and which data needs to remain confidential. Ensuring that employees understand how to protect their data is crucial in maintaining strong data integrity in your organization. Other ways to educate employees on data security include having regular cybersecurity training, such as teaching employees how to detect suspicious activity, and creating policies for employees to follow regarding data protection. Having these training programs and policies in place will make your data consistent and reliable.

Maintain your data integrity with Keeper

Securing your organization’s data is integral to your success, which is why it’s important to ensure data integrity. Your organization should make sure your data is encrypted, your employees use password managers and your data is backed up regularly. Keeper Business is a great way to keep your organization’s passwords strong and secure, with each employee having their own digital vault to safely protect important information.

Start your free 14-day trial of Keeper Business today to protect your organization’s passwords and ensure data integrity.