Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Exam

A weak form of confidentiality assurance that replaces the original information with asterisks or X's is known as what?

1. Masking

2. Obfuscation

3. Tokenization

4. Authorization

The correct answer is: Masking

The correct answer is masking. Masking refers to the technique of hiding or replacing sensitive information with symbols, such as asterisks or X's, to protect the confidentiality of the original data. This method allows the data to remain usable for certain applications without exposing the actual sensitive information. For instance, in a database that contains credit card numbers, masking would ensure that users can see a provisioned view of the number (like "**** **** **** 1234") without being able to access the full, sensitive number, thus maintaining confidentiality and preventing unauthorized access. In contrast, obfuscation involves making data less recognizable or difficult to interpret, which may not necessarily result in a clear substitution, like masking does. Tokenization refers to replacing sensitive data with unique identification symbols or tokens that retain all the essential information about the data without compromising its security, but this approach differs from simple masking as it generally maintains a mapping to the original data. Authorization, meanwhile, pertains to the process of determining access rights and privileges for users, which is not relevant to data confidentiality in the same way that masking is.