A technique for obscuring the presence of a message by embedding information within a file or entity.

A technique for obscuring the presence of a message by embedding information within a file or entity.

• A. Data masking
• B. Steganography
• C. Obfuscation
• D. Tokenization

Answer: (B)

Steganography is the practice of hiding a message inside another file or object so that the existence of the message goes unnoticed. The carrier file—like an image, audio, video, or document—looks ordinary, but contains hidden data embedded in a way that isn’t obvious to casual observation. This focus on concealment of presence, by embedding information within a harmless-looking file, is what sets steganography apart from other techniques. For example, tiny changes to the least significant bits of image pixels can carry a hidden payload without noticeably altering the image. This is different from data masking, which hides or replaces actual data within a dataset; obfuscation, which makes code or data harder to understand but doesn’t inherently hide a message inside a file; and tokenization, which replaces sensitive data with tokens rather than embedding hidden content within a carrier file.

Steganography is the practice of hiding a message inside another file or object so that the existence of the message goes unnoticed. The carrier file—like an image, audio, video, or document—looks ordinary, but contains hidden data embedded in a way that isn’t obvious to casual observation. This focus on concealment of presence, by embedding information within a harmless-looking file, is what sets steganography apart from other techniques.

For example, tiny changes to the least significant bits of image pixels can carry a hidden payload without noticeably altering the image. This is different from data masking, which hides or replaces actual data within a dataset; obfuscation, which makes code or data harder to understand but doesn’t inherently hide a message inside a file; and tokenization, which replaces sensitive data with tokens rather than embedding hidden content within a carrier file.