Approaches to multimedia and security

The requirements on security are increasing, particularly in the field of multimedia. Whether and in which way security mechanisms can be applied to multimedia data and their applications needs to be analyzed for each purpose separately. This is mainly due to the structure and complexity of multimedia. Based on the main issues of IT security, this paper introduces the most important security requirements which must be fulfilled by today's multimedia systems. Furthermore, it describes the security measures used to satisfy these requirements. These measures are based on modern cryptographic mechanisms and digital watermarking techniques, as well as on security infrastructures.