Non-repudiation is the security property that prevents a party from credibly denying an action they took, by preserving evidence of who did what, when, and where.
Main article: Non-Repudiation in Cybersecurity
In cryptography, non-repudiation has a narrower, formal meaning: assurance that data’s integrity and origin can be verified by a third party as coming from the holder of a specific private key, as provided by digital signatures. See NIST’s cryptographic definition of non-repudiation and the FIPS 186-5 Digital Signature Standard.
Relation to other terms
Non-repudiation is not one of the information characteristics in the 1991 McCumber Cube, which are limited to confidentiality, integrity, and availability. A 2001 Information Assurance model by Maconachy, Schou, Ragsdale, and Welch, presented as an extension of McCumber’s work, lists non-repudiation and authentication among its security services alongside the original three. Those same five properties make up CIANA.
Sources
- non-repudiation, NIST Computer Security Resource Center Glossary. Retrieved September 24, 2026.
- FIPS 186-5, Digital Signature Standard (DSS), NIST. Retrieved September 24, 2026.
- A Model for Information Assurance: An Integrated Approach (Maconachy, Schou, Ragsdale, and Welch), Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Workshop on Information Assurance and Security, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
See also
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