Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Practice Test

Which of the following can be used to anonymize IP addresses in Splunk?

1. Data masking

2. Token substitution

3. Regular expressions

4. Data archiving

The correct answer is: Data masking

Data masking is a technique specifically designed to hide or obscure sensitive information, such as IP addresses, from being directly visible in the data logs. In the context of Splunk, data masking can be applied to ensure compliance with privacy regulations and to protect user identity by replacing sensitive data with anonymized values. For instance, during data indexing or at search time, IP addresses can be replaced with a hashed version or a generic placeholder, thus allowing analysis without exposing personal data. The other options do not serve the specific function of anonymizing IP addresses. Token substitution is typically used to replace placeholders in a configuration or search with corresponding values, while regular expressions are powerful for pattern matching and data extraction but do not inherently provide a mechanism for data anonymization. Data archiving, on the other hand, pertains to the storage of older, less frequently accessed data and does not relate to the anonymization process. Thus, among the options, data masking is the most applicable method for anonymizing IP addresses in Splunk.