ISC2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Question

Tokenization replaces a sensitive value with a surrogate that is not derived through a mathematical algorithm, so it cannot be reversed without access to the token vault or mapping service. Because the organization defines the token format, it can mirror the original data's length, character set, and even preserve portions (for example, the first six and last four digits of a PAN). This lets existing applications and cloud data-warehouse functions-such as joins, sorting, or grouping by the preserved digits-operate without exposing the real PAN. Standard encryption, even when format-preserving, produces ciphertext that is still mathematically related to the plaintext and must be decrypted (or use more complex searchable encryption) before meaningful analytics can occur. Tokenization does not inherently provide compression, does not rely on homomorphic encryption, and still requires secure storage of token mappings; tokens themselves do not embed cryptographic key material.