Data integrity primarily concerns which aspect of information?

• A. Maintenance of accurate and consistent information/data
• B. Unauthorized access prevention
• C. Availability of data
• D. Data encryption during transmission

Answer: (A)

Data integrity is about ensuring information remains accurate and consistent throughout its lifecycle. It means data isn’t corrupted and that when data is created, stored, copied, or transmitted, its values stay true and match across places. Guarding integrity uses checksums or hashes to detect alterations, digital signatures to verify origin, and audit logs or versioning to track what changed and when. This is why the best answer describes maintaining accurate and consistent information. The other options address confidentiality (preventing unauthorized access), availability (being able to access data when needed), and protecting data in transit with encryption, which are different security goals rather than the fidelity of the data itself.