Article: A novel hybrid security mechanism for data communication networks Journal: International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity (IJIPSI) 2016 Vol.2 No.3 pp.216 - 231 Abstract: In the recent past various hybrid mechanisms that combine both steganography and cryptography have been proposed by researchers to ensure security in data communication networks since standalone method does not provide fruitful results. In cryptography, if the hacker is able to guess the secret key he can easily decrypt the data. On the other hand, if changes are somehow visible in image, the hacker may apply steganography technique to recover the plaintext. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel hybrid mechanism for efficient and secure data communication. The proposal uses both cryptography and steganography along with Huffman coding to provide good level of security to the secret data. The cryptographic technique used is cryptography and the steganography technique used is LSB using status bit. The proposed mechanism is implemented in MATLAB-09. To analyse the efficacy of the proposed mechanism, we use security, robustness and efficiency analysis. The result shows that our mechanism is much more secure as well as robust in comparison to the schemes in literature. In addition, the mechanism has lesser value of time complexity, high embedding capacity and better picture quality. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: A novel hybrid security mechanism for data communication networks

Authors: Divya Chaudhary; Shailender Gupta; Manju Kumari

Addresses: YMCA University of Science and Technology, NH-2, Sector 6, Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121006, India ' YMCA University of Science and Technology, NH-2, Sector 6, Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121006, India ' YMCA University of Science and Technology, NH-2, Sector 6, Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121006, India

Abstract: In the recent past various hybrid mechanisms that combine both steganography and cryptography have been proposed by researchers to ensure security in data communication networks since standalone method does not provide fruitful results. In cryptography, if the hacker is able to guess the secret key he can easily decrypt the data. On the other hand, if changes are somehow visible in image, the hacker may apply steganography technique to recover the plaintext. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel hybrid mechanism for efficient and secure data communication. The proposal uses both cryptography and steganography along with Huffman coding to provide good level of security to the secret data. The cryptographic technique used is cryptography and the steganography technique used is LSB using status bit. The proposed mechanism is implemented in MATLAB-09. To analyse the efficacy of the proposed mechanism, we use security, robustness and efficiency analysis. The result shows that our mechanism is much more secure as well as robust in comparison to the schemes in literature. In addition, the mechanism has lesser value of time complexity, high embedding capacity and better picture quality.

Keywords: cryptography; image steganography; information hiding; time complexity; data security; data communication networks; Huffman coding; embedding capacity; picture quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIPSI.2016.078592

International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity, 2016 Vol.2 No.3, pp.216 - 231

Received: 23 Mar 2015
Accepted: 24 Jul 2015
Published online: 25 Aug 2016 *

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Title: A novel hybrid security mechanism for data communication networks

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