Which data security measure ensures data remains unreadable to unauthorized users without a decryption key?

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Multiple Choice

Which data security measure ensures data remains unreadable to unauthorized users without a decryption key?

Protecting data so that only someone with the right key can read it is about encryption. Encryption takes readable data and transforms it into ciphertext using an algorithm and a key. Without the decryption key, the ciphertext appears as meaningless data, so unauthorized users cannot understand it. When someone with the key wants to access the original information, they decrypt the ciphertext back to plaintext. Hashing is different because it’s a one-way transformation: you can’t reliably recover the original data from the hash, so it’s not about unreadability with a decryption key. Tokenization replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens and relies on a separate vault to map tokens back to the original data, not on a decryption key. Backups are copies for recovery and aren’t inherently about making data unreadable unless they’re encrypted, which is an additional measure.

Protecting data so that only someone with the right key can read it is about encryption. Encryption takes readable data and transforms it into ciphertext using an algorithm and a key. Without the decryption key, the ciphertext appears as meaningless data, so unauthorized users cannot understand it. When someone with the key wants to access the original information, they decrypt the ciphertext back to plaintext.

Hashing is different because it’s a one-way transformation: you can’t reliably recover the original data from the hash, so it’s not about unreadability with a decryption key. Tokenization replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens and relies on a separate vault to map tokens back to the original data, not on a decryption key. Backups are copies for recovery and aren’t inherently about making data unreadable unless they’re encrypted, which is an additional measure.

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