system integrity check

A security verification process that evaluates whether a computing system's components — including OS files, application binaries, configurations, and firmware — remain unaltered from a known-good baseline, typically by comparing cryptographic hashes of current states against reference values. The underlying property being tested is whether a system performs its intended function in an unimpaired manner, free from unauthorized manipulation, whether intentional or accidental. In practice, integrity checking exposes changes that signature-based antivirus might miss and supports incident detection, forensic investigation, and compliance demonstrations with frameworks such as PCI DSS, which explicitly requires file integrity monitoring on critical systems. Implementations range from automated tools that hash executables and libraries at startup and compare them against a baseline, to continuous monitoring systems that alert when any component is replaced — for example, by a malicious executable — causing an immediate integrity-check failure.

Advisory only. A term this product ships is defined by an authority document, not by a search result.