Network Defense Essentials (NDE) Practice Exam 2025 - Free Network Defense Practice Questions and Study Guide

The component that protects information passing through the network and preserves data privacy is encryption and protocols. Encryption ensures that data is transformed into a secure format that unauthorized users cannot easily read or access. This is crucial for maintaining confidentiality, especially for sensitive information. Various encryption protocols, such as SSL/TLS for web traffic or IPsec for network layer encryption, secure data in transit, making it difficult for attackers to intercept and understand the information.

On the other hand, while firewalls play a vital role in restricting access to a network and filtering traffic based on predefined security rules, they do not inherently encrypt information to protect privacy. Access control lists manage permissions and determine who can access certain resources, but they do not address the privacy of the data being transmitted. Intrusion detection systems monitor and analyze network traffic for signs of malicious activity, but they do not secure the data itself; instead, they focus on identifying and responding to threats. Therefore, encryption and protocols are specifically designed to ensure that data is unreadable to unauthorized parties, emphasizing their importance in data protection and privacy.