CREST Practitioner Security Analyst (CPSA) Practice

What does Base64 Encoding primarily serve to accomplish?

1. Increase data security

2. Compress data files

3. Represent binary data as printable ASCII characters

4. Encrypt sensitive information

The correct answer is: Represent binary data as printable ASCII characters

Base64 encoding primarily serves to represent binary data as printable ASCII characters. This is particularly important in contexts where binary data needs to be transmitted over media that are designed to handle text. For example, email systems and embedded data within XML or JSON formats often can only handle ASCII characters. Base64 ensures that binary data—like images or executable files—can be safely and reliably represented in a text form, preventing data corruption when transferring data across systems that may not support binary formats. Using Base64 does not inherently increase data security, which would involve encryption techniques to protect information from unauthorized access. Additionally, it does not compress data files; rather, it generally expands the size of the data because it encodes three bytes of binary data into four bytes of ASCII text. Lastly, while Base64 can be used in the context of encoding sensitive information, it does not provide encryption, meaning it does not keep data confidential since any Base64-encoded string can easily be decoded back to its original form.