Which of the following best describes the process of hashing?

The process of hashing is accurately described as creating a fixed-size string from variable-length input. This means that no matter how much data you input, the resulting hash is always of the same size. For example, the SHA-256 hashing algorithm always produces a 256-bit output. Hashing is a one-way function, making it impossible to reverse the process to retrieve the original input data. This characteristic is crucial for applications such as data integrity verification and password storage, as it allows for quick checks of data integrity while not exposing the original data itself. By consistently converting varying lengths of data into a uniform size, hashing enables efficient comparisons and quick lookups, which are fundamental in many security protocols.