A documento informatico is an electronic record that carries legal or operational value, such as a contract, invoice, report, or evidence file. In cybersecurity, it is treated not just as content, but as a record whose integrity, authenticity, and availability may need to be proven later. A file can be readable and still be untrustworthy if it was altered, created by an unauthorized source, or generated through an opaque process.
This matters because attackers often target the trust placed in documents: they may forge PDFs, modify attachments, impersonate signers, or inject misleading content into business workflows. Defenses include digital signatures, hashing, timestamps, access control, audit logs, and provenance records that show how the document was produced and handled. These controls do not only protect the final file; they help demonstrate that the record is reliable, preserved, and defensible if challenged.