CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 Practice Question

Tokenization is the correct method for replacing sensitive data with a unique identifier that is not sensitive, known as a token, which has no extrinsic or exploitable meaning or value. The process allows businesses to work with the essential information without exposing sensitive data—enhancing security while minimizing the impact on systems that need to use the data. Encryption, in contrast, protects data by converting it into a coded format that can be decrypted only with a key, making it different from tokenization. Salting is used to enhance the security of a hashing process by adding a unique value to the end of the password before hashing occurs, thus providing no data obfuscation or replacement on its own. Anonymization is the process of removing personally identifiable information from data sets, so that the people whom the data describe remain anonymous, which is a broader concept than tokenization and does not necessarily use a token to replace sensitive data.