Data Integrity Audit
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While there can be many contributing factors to data integrity errors, making sure you understand the true cause of your data integrity issues has to be the first step. Failing to do this will cause you to be continuously fixing symptoms and never have a complete solution. To help prevent data integrity problems from occurring in the first place, you need to look at your data security and database usage statistics to determine where data is actively being compromised or has potential to be compromised. The only way to do this is by knowing exactly what your users are doing. You should design your application data management policy so you can answer the following questions:
- Question: Do you know who is accessing and changing vital or sensitive data?
- Comment: Collect the access logs for all critical applications and documents. Design all applications to support document change histories.
- Question: Are you confident you know who has access to your high impact production applications?
- Comment: Make sure all application access is regularly audited. Preventing abuse by unauthorized users is the foundation of any data integrity policy. This is outlined in the Security Management policy.
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- Question: Do you know which applications are being used at all?
- Comment: Abandoned applications may contain sensitive data. Do not let unused applications remain on the server.
- Question: Do you have an easy way to deal with replication conflicts that preserve data that would otherwise be lost?
- Comment: Many users just delete a replication conflict when they are discovered. Do not let this to happen as important data may be lost.
- Question: Can you be alerted when an error is introduced before a customer or user finds it?
- Comment: Even though notification occurs after the error has occurred, you are in a position to address the issue proactively. Early identification of problems can help you resolve them more easily, and user notification before they realize there is a data issue can result in improved customer satisfaction.
- Question: Is your QA environment a mirror of the production environment?
- Comment: During testing is the best time to identify any potential data integrity weaknesses. Use QA to monitor issues in order to keep to a minimum the number of users encountering problems.