System Integrity – A Cautionary Tale

One of the vital security requirements in information systems is integrity of information that is processed. Current security practices place more emphasis on protection of data with less focus on protection of the system processing that data, with inadequate security requirements specification throughout the system development life cycle. The consequence of this practice is a potential system dysfunction or degraded performance thus compromising system integrity. This paper explores the current practices for providing system integrity protection and the limitations thereof which can potentially undermine system integrity.