Authenticity
The quality of a record being genuinely what it purports to be — created or sent by the person who claims to have done so, at the time claimed — and not forged, altered, or impersonated.
Authenticity is one of the core characteristics of a trustworthy record, alongside reliability, integrity, and usability. A record is authentic when you can demonstrate that it is genuinely what it claims to be: produced by the stated author, in the stated context, at the stated time, and not subsequently impersonated or counterfeited. Authenticity is closely tied to integrity but distinct from it — integrity concerns whether content has changed, while authenticity concerns whether the record’s claimed origin and identity are true.
Authenticity matters because records are used as evidence. A court, auditor, or citizen relies on a record only if it can be shown to be genuine. Recordkeeping systems support authenticity by capturing provenance, maintaining an unbroken chain of custody, and binding metadata such as author, date, and system of origin to the content. For electronic records, controls like access restrictions, audit trails, and fixity checks help prove a document was not impersonated or substituted. For example, an email is authentic when its captured headers and metadata reliably establish that it really came from the named sender on the recorded date.