What technology is often used to implement confidentiality?

Encryption is a widely recognized technology employed to ensure confidentiality in data management and communications. When data is encrypted, it is transformed into a format that is unreadable without the appropriate decryption key. This transformation effectively safeguards data from unauthorized access, making it a critical component in protecting sensitive information from potential breaches or leaks.

Confidentiality involves ensuring that information is accessible only by those who have the proper authorization. Encryption serves this purpose by scrambling the data during transmission or storage, thereby preventing any unauthorized entities from interpreting or accessing the original content. This is especially important for data that may be transmitted over insecure channels or stored in environments where unauthorized access is a possibility.

Other options such as auditing, firewalls, and access control play significant roles in a comprehensive security strategy but do not focus primarily on confidentiality. Auditing refers to monitoring and analyzing activity within systems to detect unauthorized or malicious actions; while firewalls act as barriers controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules. Access control, on the other hand, determines who can access or manipulate resources within a system. While these measures contribute to overall security, encryption specifically addresses the need to protect the confidentiality of the information itself.