Enhancing Data Protection Using Cryptography and Image Steganography in Cloud Environment

The rapid advancement and widespread adoption of cloud computing services have indeed revolutionized data storage and management. However, the centralization of sensitive information in cloud environments does pose significant security and privacy risks. It's crucial to implement robust measures that safeguard all types of data in the cloud from loss, leakage, or misuse and unauthorized access. To address these concerns, we propose a solution that combines cryptography and image steganography to enhance data protection in the cloud. Specifically, our approach utilizes Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for cryptography, Diffie-Hellman for secure key exchange, and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) steganography to ensure robust data security. AES encrypts the data, making it unreadable to unauthorized users, while Diffie-Hellman for secure key exchange ensures robust protection against unauthorized access. The encrypted data is then hidden within digital images using DCT steganography, adding an extra layer of security. This dual approach aims to reduce the risks of data breaches, unauthorized access, and tampering. Our proposed method demonstrates high effectiveness in maintaining data confidentiality, integrity, and availability without severely impacting system performance, highlighting the potential of this combined strategy in safeguarding cloud-stored data. Performance metrics analysis shows our approach is robust and efficient, ensuring enhanced protection for cloud-based data.