Digital Image Security: Fusion of Encryption, Steganography and Watermarking

Digital images are widely communicated over the internet. The security of digital images is an essential and challenging task on shared communication channel. Various techniques are used to secure the digital image, such as encryption, steganography and watermarking. These are the methods for the security of digital images to achieve security goals, i.e. confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA). Individually, these procedures are not quite sufficient for the security of digital images. This paper presents a blended security technique using encryption, steganography and watermarking. It comprises of three key components: (1) the original image has been encrypted using large secret key by rotating pixel bits to right through XOR operation, (2) for steganography, encrypted image has been altered by least significant bits (LSBs) of the cover image and obtained stego image, then (3) stego image has been watermarked in the time domain and frequency domain to ensure the ownership. The proposed approach is efficient, simpler and secured; it provides significant security against threats and attacks.