6 · Security, Privacy and Data Integrity

6.1 Data Security — threats to data, methods of protection, firewalls, authentication, malware. 6.2 Data Validation and Verification — validation types, verification on entry and on transfer. 6.3 Encryption — symmetric and asymmetric, keys, digital signatures, SSL/TLS.

🧩 Jigsaw

105 concepts mapped to the syllabus

🎯 Pack

110 question/answer pairs

What to know about this topic

The highest proportion of 9608 content in the vault

39 of the 110 Pack entries are 9608 — more than a third. Security changed relatively little between syllabuses, so the old questions remain live. Do not skip the !warning callouts here.

The digital signature is a 5-mark question

It is easy to under-describe. The full mark scheme runs hash the message → produce a digest → encrypt the digest with the private key → send with the message → decrypt with the public key → re-hash the received message → compare the two digests. Seven steps for five marks: 9618_s25_qp_11_sc_7.b.

Validation ≠ verification

Validation checks data is reasonable; verification checks it has been copied accurately. Questions routinely offer the wrong one as a distractor, and an answer that confuses them loses every mark in that part.

Source material

• 9618 — Data Security · 9618 — Data Integrity
• 9608 — Data Security · 9608 — Data Integrity

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