Final answer:
The process of adding random data to a password is called salting. Salting enhances security by ensuring that hashed passwords are unique, even when the original passwords are the same.
Step-by-step explanation:
The process that involves adding random data into a password is known as salting. When a password is created, adding a salt means that a random string of characters is appended to the password before it undergoes the hashing process. By doing so, even if two users have the same password, the addition of a unique salt ensures that their hashed passwords will be different, which greatly enhances security by making it more difficult for attackers to use precomputed tables (like rainbow tables) to crack the passwords. Hashing is a one-way cryptographic function used to transform data into a fixed-length string, which represents the original data. However, hashing alone does not prevent identical passwords from having identical hashes, which is why salting is important. Authentication is the process of verifying identity, and deciphering refers to decoding encrypted information. In this context, salting is the correct answer.