Process integrity is the reliability and trustworthiness of an end-to-end production workflow, from the original digital file to the finished physical object. In cyber security, it means more than keeping a machine online: it means ensuring that design data, job settings, machine instructions, materials, and execution steps have not been altered, corrupted, or silently substituted.
This matters in additive manufacturing because a small change can produce a bad part that still looks plausible. An attacker, insider, or software fault might modify a CAD file, slice settings, resin selection, or printer firmware, creating weak, unsafe, or nonfunctional output. Defenses focus on preserving the chain of custody for data and machine state: file hashing, signed jobs, access control, change logging, configuration review, and sensor-based verification. When process integrity is strong, the final object better matches the intended design.