In improving disaster IT resilience, which cyber threat is most directly related to data integrity?

• A. Ransomware attacks and data integrity threats.
• B. Phishing campaigns aimed at outreach volunteers.
• C. Denial-of-service attacks on social media pages.
• D. Power grid outages.

Answer: (B)

Data integrity means keeping data accurate, complete, and trustworthy, even in a disaster or after a cyber event. The threat most directly tied to compromising that trust is ransomware and similar data-tampering threats. When ransomware hits, data can be encrypted or altered in ways that make it unusable or inconsistent, breaking the trustworthiness of the information and forcing restoration from clean, trusted copies. This directly threatens whether the data can be relied upon for decision-making and response.

Phishing targets people to gain access, which can lead to breaches, but it doesn’t by itself compromise the truthfulness of data. Denial-of-service attacks disrupt availability, not the data’s correctness. Power grid outages affect access to systems and data, but their primary impact is operational continuity rather than data integrity.