What technique is commonly used in security to ensure the authenticity of a message?

What technique is commonly used in security to ensure the authenticity of a message?

• A. Hashing
• B. Encryption
• C. Signing
• D. Tokenization

Answer: (C)

The technique commonly used in security to ensure the authenticity of a message is signing. Signing a message involves using a cryptographic algorithm to generate a signature based on the message content and a private key. This signature is then attached to the message and can be verified by the recipient using the sender's public key. The primary purpose of signing is to confirm the identity of the sender and ensure that the message has not been altered during transmission. If even a single bit of the message changes, the signature will not match when verified. This provides a strong assurance that the message comes from the purported sender (authenticity) and has not been tampered with (integrity). While techniques such as hashing and encryption are also important in data security, they serve different purposes. Hashing is used primarily for data integrity, creating a fixed-size string representation of data that changes if the data itself is altered. Encryption, on the other hand, focuses on confidentiality, scrambling data to protect it from unauthorized access. Tokenization replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive equivalents, but it does not authenticate messages. Therefore, signing is the appropriate technique for ensuring message authenticity.

The technique commonly used in security to ensure the authenticity of a message is signing. Signing a message involves using a cryptographic algorithm to generate a signature based on the message content and a private key. This signature is then attached to the message and can be verified by the recipient using the sender's public key.

The primary purpose of signing is to confirm the identity of the sender and ensure that the message has not been altered during transmission. If even a single bit of the message changes, the signature will not match when verified. This provides a strong assurance that the message comes from the purported sender (authenticity) and has not been tampered with (integrity).

While techniques such as hashing and encryption are also important in data security, they serve different purposes. Hashing is used primarily for data integrity, creating a fixed-size string representation of data that changes if the data itself is altered. Encryption, on the other hand, focuses on confidentiality, scrambling data to protect it from unauthorized access. Tokenization replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive equivalents, but it does not authenticate messages. Therefore, signing is the appropriate technique for ensuring message authenticity.