SECAI Core · phase 4 of 15 · noun

Data integrity

To safeguard the trustworthiness and accuracy of data throughout its lifecycle

The Explain card

Plain English
Data integrity means keeping data trustworthy and accurate across its whole lifecycle, so it is not altered, corrupted or tampered with without someone noticing.
Example
A team hashes each training dataset snapshot. When a checkpoint is rebuilt later, the hash mismatch reveals that someone quietly modified a few thousand labels.
Why it matters
Models are only as reliable as the data that shaped them. Without integrity controls, poisoning is invisible and you cannot prove which data produced which model.
Hook
Trust the data the way you trust a sealed evidence bag.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

On the training cluster, a data integrity check compares the SHA-256 of tonight's labeled shard with the digest written at ingest, and the job aborts on a mismatch.

Why these words
  • data Latin data, things given, plural of datum supplies the given-facts half, so the soundness is of records rather than of character
  • integrity Latin integritas, wholeness, from integer, untouched names the untouched-wholeness the phrase claims for those given facts
Where it came from
Origin
English computing collocation from Latin data (things given, plural of datum) and Latin integritas (wholeness, from integer, untouched)
Entered the language
1960s
What changed
Data had meant things given, then facts granted in an argument, then the records a machine keeps. Integrity had meant the uncut quality of a whole, then a person's uprightness, then the soundness of a system. Computing papers of the 1960s joined them for records that had not been quietly rewritten, and the pair later named a pillar of the CIA triad and a training-set worry.
How it is spelled
Pattern
data stays the Latin plural of datum, even when English treats it as a mass noun
Pattern
-ity nouns from Latin -itas name a quality
Pattern
in- meaning not keeps its n before t, as in intact and integer
Breaks the pattern
the noun phrase stays two words; the hyphen appears only when it modifies another noun
Breaks the pattern
data looks plural but computing English often treats it as a mass noun
Breaks the pattern
integrity keeps a hard g, while integer, from the same Latin root, softens it to j

Spelled like

  • database
  • sincerity
  • gravity
  • intact
Broken into chunks
  • data
    • datum
    • metadata
    • database
  • in
    • intact
    • intangible
    • invalid
  • tegr
    • integer
    • integrate
    • integral
  • ity
    • gravity
    • sincerity
    • purity
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

Data compounds

Integrity compounds

  • referential integrity
  • system integrity
  • processing integrity

CIA triad

  • confidentiality
  • availability

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 4: Data Integrity, Governance, and Provenance

Once you know what data is, learn the principles that keep it trustworthy, traceable, and minimized throughout its lifecycle.

Neighbours in this phase