Which of the following is a recommended practice for ensuring secure password storage?

Using a salt with passwords is a recommended practice for ensuring secure password storage because it adds an additional layer of security in the hashing process. When a password is hashed for storage, a salt — which is a random string of characters — is added to the password before the hashing occurs. This ensures that even if two users have the same password, their hashed values will be different because of the unique salts, making it much more difficult for an attacker to use precomputed tables (like rainbow tables) to crack the hashes.

The salting process mitigates the risks associated with dictionary attacks and brute-force attacks, as each password is uniquely modified. This makes it significantly more challenging for attackers to successfully crack multiple passwords at once.

Correctly implementing such practices contributes to the overall security of an application, as securely stored passwords are critical in protecting user identities and sensitive information from unauthorized access.