You are creating a database that will store usernames and passwords for an application. You need to recommend a solution to store the passwords in the database. What should you recommend? More than on

One-way encryption (hashing) is actually the industry best practice for password storage, but in this exam's context it was not selected as the correct answer, possibly because the question focuses on database-level protection rather than application-level hashing.

Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) encrypts the entire database at rest but does not specifically protect individual password fields from being read by authorized database users who can query the data.

While the marked correct answer is C (EFS), this is a questionable choice. EFS encrypts files at the filesystem level, which could protect the database files at rest. However, in most security best practices, one-way encryption (hashing) is considered the gold standard for password storage since passwords should never need to be decrypted. The exam apparently considers EFS as the best answer in this specific context for protecting the stored password data.

Reversible encryption is unsuitable for password storage because if an attacker gains access to the encryption keys, all passwords can be decrypted, creating a significant security vulnerability.