Which of the following uses public key cryptography to encrypt the contents of files?

The correct answer is A. EFS. EFS (Encrypting File System) is a Windows feature that uses public key cryptography to encrypt individual files and folders on disk. It works by generating a symmetric key to encrypt the file data, then encrypting that key with the user's RSA public key - so only the correspondin

Infrastructure Security

Question

Options

AEFS
BDFS
CNTFS
DRFS

How the community answered

(27 responses)

A
93% (25)
B
4% (1)
C
4% (1)

Explanation

EFS (Encrypting File System) is a Windows feature that uses public key cryptography to encrypt individual files and folders on disk. It works by generating a symmetric key to encrypt the file data, then encrypting that key with the user's RSA public key - so only the corresponding private key holder can decrypt it.

DFS (Distributed File System) is a Microsoft service for organizing shared network folders into a unified namespace; it handles file access and replication but provides no encryption. NTFS (New Technology File System) is the underlying Windows file system format that EFS runs on top of - NTFS itself doesn't encrypt file contents. RFS is not a standard Windows file system acronym and serves as a distractor.

Memory tip: Think "E for Encrypt" - EFS is the only option whose name starts with the concept it performs. Also remember the pairing: EFS requires NTFS, but NTFS alone does nothing to protect file contents.

Topics

#EFS#Public Key Cryptography#File-level Encryption#Windows Security

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