An accountant is transferring information to a bank over FTP. Which of the following mitigations should the accountant use to protect the confidentiality of the data?

Question

Options

• ATokenization
• BData masking
• CEncryption
• DObfuscation

• A
  2% (1)
• B
  5% (2)
• C
  93% (38)

Explanation

Encryption is the correct choice because FTP transmits data in plaintext, making it vulnerable to interception - encrypting the data (or using a secure alternative like SFTP/FTPS) ensures that even if the data is captured in transit, it remains unreadable to unauthorized parties, directly protecting confidentiality.

• Tokenization (A) replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens, useful for storing payment data, but it doesn't protect data in transit over a network.
• Data masking (B) obscures data for display or testing purposes (e.g., showing only the last 4 digits of a card number), but masked data isn't protected when sent across a network.
• Obfuscation (D) makes data harder to understand but doesn't provide true security - it relies on obscurity, not a cryptographic key, so it's not a reliable confidentiality control.

Memory tip: When a question involves protecting data in transit (especially over an insecure protocol like FTP, HTTP, or Telnet), encryption is almost always the answer - think "data moving = encryption needed."

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