Which of the following solutions would most likely be used in the financial industry to mask sensitive data?

Hashing is a one-way cryptographic function that transforms data into a fixed-size string of characters, making it irreversible. While hashing provides security for storing passwords and verifying data integrity, it is not suitable for situations where the original data needs to be retrieved or used, such as in financial transactions.

Salting involves adding random data to passwords before hashing to defend against dictionary attacks. Though useful in enhancing password security, salting does not provide a method for masking sensitive financial information in a way that allows for its retrieval, which is crucial in the financial sector.

Steganography hides data within other non-sensitive data, like embedding messages in images. While it can conceal information, it is not a standard method for masking sensitive financial data and lacks the necessary structure for secure transactions compared to tokenization.