Comprehensive Analysis: Risks and Costs of Data Integrity

This essay examines the risks and costs associated with compromised data integrity, highlighting that data breaches caused by hackers can lead to leakage of sensitive organizational and employee data, incurring significant remediation costs. Financial institutions are particularly vulnerable due to the high reward-to-risk ratio for attackers. Beyond financial gain, hackers may target data alteration, which can be disastrous in sectors like healthcare, where unauthorized changes to patient records can endanger lives. Data integrity breaches stem from technical, natural, malicious, and human errors. Organizations with a strong data integrity stance foster a culture of compliance and quality, starting with executive leadership and reinforced by top-down commitment. Examples like Yahoo, eBay, and Equifax underscore the widespread impact of these breaches. Maintaining data consistency and accuracy is crucial for data security, requiring constant vigilance and proactive measures to mitigate potential threats and ensure the reliability of stored data.

Running Head: DATA INTEGRITY BREACHES
DATA INTEGRITY BREACHES
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

1DATA INTEGRITY BREACHES
Introduction
A data breach that is caused due to numerous hackers to tend to draw information
regarding an organization or its functions has various risks including leakage of sensitive data
about the organization and its employees (Sen & Borle, 2015). There are many ways to
overcome the obstacle and retrieve data but this process requires a huge amount of cost incurred
in it. The risks and the approximate costs involved in the compromised data integrity breaches
are mentioned in the discussion part.
Discussion
It has been extracted from the findings of various researches that the cost incurred in the
mitigation of cyber breaches is much more than $400bn per year. This financial figure includes
remediation as well as preventive activities (Rao & Selvamani, 2015). This says the fact that a
particular financial institution is more likely to be the target of any attack compared to any other
organization, this is found out when the risk or reward ratio of successful breaching of the
perimeter of a bank is considered. Financial institutions would always remain the focus of any
kind of threat which seeks for financial gain.
In many cases the hackers do not aim in gaining financial profit by attacking an institute
or any other organization they just aim in changing the data and decrease the integrity of the
data. Suppose in a healthcare institute, an unauthorized user gets access to the data and changes
the records of patients (Bai, Jiang & Flasher, 2017). This could be very risky for him because the
change in data can put his life at risk. Changes in medical history, diagnoses and the records of
medication can prove to be disastrous for the patients as well as the institute.

2DATA INTEGRITY BREACHES
In case of a financial institute or a particular public company, very small unauthorized
changes in information can result in creating major problems especially if the data forms are part
of a report to the organization’s stakeholders. Compromise of data integrity can be due to
numerous causes like technical causes, natural causes, malicious causes and human errors.
Organizations that have a strong stance on data integrity have a culture that is actually committed
to compliance and quality (Clarke, 2016). This particular culture starts with an executive
leadership. It is also reinforced by top down commitment to various values, communicated
philosophies of management and processes. In these particular organizations every employee is
held to the highest level with a policy of zero tolerance for fraud.
Some examples of breaches in data integrity are Yahoo, it was attacked on 2014 in
September, and eBay had also met a data integrity breach on May, 2014 where around 145
million users had to compromise. One more example of data integrity breach is the attack on
Equifax which occurred on July, 29, 2017
Conclusion
From the above essay it can be concluded that there are numerous risks and cost issues in
compromised data integrity. Data integrity is a component of data security. It can also be referred
to as the consistency and accuracy of data stored in the database, data mart or data mart. The
consistency of the data is very important for any organization. Any factor that affects the
consistency and quality of data integrity should be removed in the highest priority.

3DATA INTEGRITY BREACHES
References
Bai, G., Jiang, J. X., & Flasher, R. (2017). Hospital risk of data breaches. JAMA internal
medicine, 177(6), 878-880.
Clarke, R. (2016). Big data, big risks. Information Systems Journal, 26(1), 77-90.
Rao, R. V., & Selvamani, K. (2015). Data security challenges and its solutions in cloud
computing. Procedia Computer Science, 48, 204-209.
Sen, R., & Borle, S. (2015). Estimating the contextual risk of a data breach: An empirical
approach. Journal of Management Information Systems, 32(2), 314-341.