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Requirements: Authenticity

Authenticity in cybersecurity ensures that data or communications can be verified as coming from their claimed source, with no dispute about their origin. It is a distinct concept from authentication, though the two are closely related.

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About this video

Authenticity in cybersecurity refers to the property of undisputed origin, meaning that when data, a message, or a resource is received, its source can be confidently verified without question. If one party sends a message to another, the recipient needs assurance that the content genuinely came from the claimed sender and was not introduced or altered by a malicious actor along the way. This property is foundational to trust in digital communication, whether between individuals, systems, or organizations. Though authenticity and authentication are closely related, they address different concerns. Authentication typically involves proving identity to a system, such as supplying a username and password at login. Authenticity, by contrast, pertains to the verifiable origin of the data itself, independent of a login process. Establishing that a message truly came from its stated sender requires different mechanisms, and credentials alone are generally not sufficient for this purpose. Public key infrastructure is one of the primary technologies used to establish authenticity in digital environments. It is widely applied in securing websites, ensuring that visitors are interacting with a legitimate source and receiving unaltered content. Understanding authenticity and how it is enforced through cryptographic systems is a core competency in cybersecurity practice.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Authenticity in Security

Key terms

Authenticity
The assurance that information or a communication originates from the claimed source and has not been fabricated or impersonated. Digital signatures and certificates are common mechanisms for establishing authenticity.
Authentication
The process of verifying the identity of a user, device, or system.
Digital Signature
A cryptographic mechanism used to verify the authenticity and integrity of a digital message or document.
Public Key Infrastructure
PKI
A framework of hardware, software, policies, and standards used to create, manage, and distribute digital certificates.
Non-repudiation
The assurance that a party cannot deny having sent or received a message or performed an action.

Topics

Authenticity Authentication Cybersecurity Digital Communications Security Requirements Cryptography

Transcript

If you were to send me something, how do I know that it comes from you? This is what authenticity is: that whenever I receive something, it has a certain level of authenticity, that I know that it's authentic and from the person that it says it's from.

Undisputed Origin

Authentic means undisputed origin, which essentially means wherever it came from, we know that it came from that origin, or we really don't question it — it's obvious that it came from that origin. So, as an example here, Susan sends David a message and David receives that. David knows that it has not been received from an adversary, that it came from Susan.

Authenticity Versus Authentication

If you think about it, it's very closely related to authentication, but it is very different from it as well. When we authenticate to a system, we give it a username and password when we log in. That's proving who we are, that we say this is who I am when I log into the system. When I send a message and it's from me, it's undisputed that it is from me. We can't do that with necessarily a username and password, unless we're doing it through some sort of third-party system. But what happens is that there are other ways to create authenticity with that, and there's a different process for that.

So we create authenticity with this message so that way whoever receives it knows it came from me. We do this a lot with websites. When we visit a website, we want to know we're getting the correct information and the correct website. And there is a way for that authenticity to happen through public key infrastructure.

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