Data provenance and integrity
When working with any kind of data, there are two often-overlooked questions that should be considered:
- Does the data come from a reliable source or from the source that you expected it to?
- Does the data contain all of the contents that you expected it to?
The first question refers to the topic of data provenance. Data provenance is about determining where data originated from.
The second question refers to the topic of data integrity. Data integrity is about determining whether the contents you received from a remote location represent what you expected to receive and can help determine whether the data was tampered with as it was sent through the wire. Both data provenance and data integrity can be verified using a concept called digital signatures. An author can create a unique signature based on cryptography to sign data and the consumer of that data can use cryptographic tools to verify the authenticity of that signature.
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