3 Ways to Maintain Your Business Data Integrity in 2024

As a business leader, a reputation for integrity is one of your most valuable assets. 

These days, integrity has more than one meaning — and when it comes to data, it’s one you need to understand. Data integrity is vital for gaining accurate insights, as well as maintaining cybersecurity. With 6.41 million data records leaked worldwide in the first quarter of 2023 alone, it’s never been more important.

Customers want to know their data is safe with you — and, although Colorado’s startup and entrepreneur market remains buoyant, corrupted, incomplete or unguarded data has the power to knock even the most healthy business off-course. 

READ: How to Protect Your Business Against a Data Breach in 2024

What is data integrity and why does it matter in business?

You may have heard the terms ‘data security’ and ‘data quality’ before. While these are related to data integrity, be careful not to confuse them. Data integrity is about how accurate and reliable a database is, data quality refers to the data being fit for purpose and data security is the process that protects data from unauthorized access.

Trustworthy databases are:

1. Accurate: the data is free from errors.
2. Traceable: it’s clear who recorded, updated, or accessed existing data and when.
3. Synchronized: the data is registered or updated immediately.
4. Legible: the data is easy to understand.
5. Original: the data is stored in its raw, unaltered form.

These five principles support informed decision-making and help organizations comply with legal obligations and industry standards.

Maintaining data integrity can be difficult and time-consuming if you don’t have a dedicated system to support you. Modern enterprise architecture EA takes the pressure away by analyzing and evaluating existing capabilities, and then ‘leveling up’ the company’s IT & infrastructure to propel it towards its overall goal.

Embracing automation in IT processes can further streamline data management tasks, ensuring accuracy and reliability while freeing up valuable time for your IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Enterprise architecture has become a cornerstone of ensuring you have accurate and relevant data. So, along with the following methods to conserve data integrity, it’s wise to see how enterprise architecture might be used to enhance your business operations even further.

READ: Discover the Best CRMs for Small Businesses in 2024

Which methods help to ensure data integrity?

Here are three effective methods for ensuring data integrity in 2024.

1. Regularly backup data

Reportedly, 1-in-3 businesses are unprepared for a disaster due to inadequate recovery plans. Whether it’s hardware failure, software corruption or unauthorized modification, once it’s gone, it’s gone! So begin optimizing your business data integrity by putting a solid data backup and recovery plan in place.

With more cyber attacks and natural disasters expected in the coming years, don’t be a statistic! Avoid delays and profit losses by adopting a data recovery plan that covers these five crucial steps:

1. Evaluate the current backup infrastructure.
2. Establish and improve storage requirements with data capacity planning.
3. Review user policies and procedures to determine best practices.
4. Pinpoint resource constraints that could affect the performance of data backups.
5. Regularly test and review your data recovery plan.

Initiating compulsory backup and recovery training for data center teams can increase efficiency, provide more accountability, and give you a competitive edge too.

READ: Secure Your Business in the Digital Age— Essential Data Protection Strategies

2. Data entry training

Four major risks to data integrity are human error, transfer errors, bugs and viruses and compromised hardware. So, training your workforce is the key to proactively preserving business data integrity.

You can put as many systems in place as you want, but if employees don’t understand them, chaos is sure to follow. Ensure you only store high-quality data by explaining why it matters, as well as how to accurately record it.

Not only can data entry training improve data accuracy and reduce errors and costs, it can enhance staff productivity levels too.

3. Establish a culture of integrity

Maintaining data integrity shouldn’t be left to your IT team. Instead, it should be part of your business culture. Make sure everyone understands why it matters, and incorporate it in your day-to-day workflow. For instance, encourage everyone to:

1. Encrypt their data.
2. Use digital signatures.
3. Maintain detailed logs and audit trails.
4. Use secure data storage options.
5. Use access controls like two-factor authentication.

Additionally, consider implementing robust strategies for product data syndication to ensure that your product information remains consistent and up-to-date across various platforms, helping you maintain data integrity throughout your business operations.

You could also consider incorporating data extraction techniques to ensure seamless and accurate retrieval of information from diverse sources, further strengthening your efforts in maintaining data integrity.

Take back control by fusing EA architecture with your business data integrity protocols. Options like the Ardoq enterprise architecture tool can help decision-makers make the best possible choices backed by data-driven insights.

Prioritize business data integrity for improved accuracy and performance

Immersed in a world fueled by data, maintaining data integrity in business has become essential. It’s vital for gathering accurate insights, preventing data loss, and boosting consumer confidence. Combining these various data integrity techniques will help boost trust and reliability in your data, as well as your brand.

Diana Nechita is the Director of Product Marketing at Ardoq.