The replacement of sensitive data with meaningless tokens is called?

• A. Tokenization
• B. Steganography
• C. PKI
• D. IPsec

Answer: (A)

Tokenization replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens that have no meaning on their own. The real data is kept secure in a vault, and systems use the token as a stand-in, which means the actual sensitive information isn’t exposed during processing. This approach minimizes risk and helps with compliance because only the vault can map the token back to the original data, while the token’s format can be aligned to the needs of downstream systems. Steganography hides information inside other data, PKI deals with cryptographic keys and certificates, and IPsec protects data in transit at the network level—none of these substitute sensitive data with usable, meaningless tokens in the same way.