A systems administrator needs to implement a way for users to verify software integrity. Which of the following tools would BEST meet the administrator's needs?

TLS 1.3 is a transport layer security protocol used to encrypt data in transit between endpoints, not a tool for verifying static file integrity.

CRC32 is a cyclic redundancy check designed for error detection in data transmission and is not a cryptographic function - it is trivially easy to forge and unsuitable for security-grade integrity verification.

AES-256 is a symmetric encryption algorithm used to protect the confidentiality of data, not to produce a verifiable hash digest for integrity checking.

SHA-512 is a member of the SHA-2 family of cryptographic hash functions and is designed specifically to produce a unique, one-way fingerprint of data. Administrators publish the SHA-512 hash of a software package, and users run the same hash on their downloaded file - if the digests match, integrity is confirmed. Its 512-bit output makes it highly resistant to collision attacks compared to weaker alternatives.