Robust Method for Data Protection and Change Detection

Methods exist for processing an original data sequence in order to generate information about the data for the purposes of integrity measurement, ownership demonstration, and authentication. The first category is digital watermarking, the second is data hashing, and the third is error detection coding. In the present context, watermarking is often used for ownership demonstration and authentication purposes; data hashing is often used for integrity measurement purposes; and as with data hashing, error detection coding is used to measure data integrity. However, the latter is normally done as part of data transmission protocol, and therefore addresses transmission errors rather than tampering.