Exam SY0-601 topic 1 question 563 discussion

S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a technology that provides end-to-end encryption for email messages. When S/MIME is implemented, email messages are encrypted while at rest on the email server, making it difficult for an attacker to access the content even if they gain unauthorized access to the mail servers. Therefore, implementing S/MIME to encrypt the emails at rest would be the best option to prevent email contents from being released in case of another breach.

A. S/MIME From Darril Gibson Get certified get ahead: "Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(S/MIME) is one of the most popular standards used to digitally sign and encrypt email. Most email applications that support encryption and digital signatures use S/MIME standards. S/MIME uses both asymmetric encryption and symmetric encryption. It can encrypt email at rest (stored on a drive) and in transit (data sent over the network)."

S/MIME provides encryption for data at rest

I chose B but now i realize the answer is A. I thought S/MIME was for encrypting data in transit, but I see apparently is can encrypt data at rest too. The reason its not B is because while FDE encrypts data at rest, the email data will be unencrypted when the user is viewing their inbox. So even on a FDE device, an attacker can still see the unencrypted email when its being used by a user

Selected Answer: A S/MIME certificates encrypt emails while they sit on the server (data at rest).

I think is B. S/MIME does not provide encryption.