Failure mode
Silent Data Corruption
A failure mode where the platform continues to operate, but the analytical meaning or correctness of the data has degraded without obvious operational alarms.
Domain: semantic-reliabilityDomain: execution-reliability
ARF layer: analytical-explainabilityARF layer: semantic-integrity
Signals
- pipelines succeed and dashboards refresh, but downstream users no longer trust the outputs
- no single job failure explains the wrong result
- the problem is discovered only through domain expertise, manual reconciliation, or business anomaly
Why it matters
Silent corruption is the failure mode that best captures why analytical reliability deserves its own lens. Traditional operational telemetry can say the system is healthy while the answer is materially wrong.
Prevention patterns
- business-aware quality monitoring, not just technical validation
- stronger lineage, explanation, and reconciliation coverage
- explicit confidence and caveat signals for high-stakes outputs