The cyber security market in 2012 is estimated at $60 billion, yet adding more and more layers of perimeter security may lead to a false sense of security and be completely useless against a determined system administrator working on the inside. The end result is that your data might be secure or it might not – you simply have no way to prove it.
Shawn Henry, FBI veteran of 24 years and now president of CrowdStrike Services had this to say about integrity at the Black Hat conference this year: “These days, you can’t just protect the information from being viewed. You also need to protect it from being changed or modified.”
This leads to the question: Would you know if an attacker or your own system administrator got to your data?
Traditionally, the ‘integrity’ component of the CIA triad of data security [confidentiality, integrity, availability] has focused on protecting the integrity of data. But proving the integrity of data – knowing you have not been compromised – is equally if not more important.