Integritäts

Integritäts is a form used in German to refer to integrity-related concepts, though the standard noun is Integrität. The prefix form Integritäts- appears in compounds such as Integritätsprüfung, Integritätsverletzung or Integritätsmaßnahmen. The root goes back to Latin integritas, meaning wholeness or completeness, and it is used across ethics, information technology, and systems engineering.

In ethics, Integrität describes a person’s adherence to moral principles, consistency between beliefs and actions, and honesty. It is valued as a trait of character and trustworthiness, shaping professional and interpersonal conduct.

In information technology and data management, Integrität refers to the accuracy, consistency, and trustworthiness of information throughout its lifecycle. Data integrity means that data remain correct and unaltered by storage, transmission, or processing; it is threatened by errors, corruption, or tampering. Protections include checksums and hash functions, digital signatures, encryption, redundancy, backups, and careful versioning and access controls, as well as transactional integrity in databases (ACID properties).

In system and software engineering, integrity also covers the resistance of software and hardware to unauthorized modification, fault propagation, and environmental changes. Techniques such as secure boot, attestation, integrity monitoring, and configuration management help maintain system integrity.

Legally and in standards contexts, data integrity is a central concern in information security, health care, and finance, often addressed alongside confidentiality and availability.

Etymology: Integrität derives from Latin integritas, and Integritäts- forms are used in compounds to specify integrity-related concepts.