A novel approach for image security using reversible watermarking

In this fast developing world of Internet, securing images is a major security concern in storage and communication. Images are prone to tampering, leakage and attacks. Hence, it is very essential to secure images in the fields of medical science, defense and law enforcement. Cryptographic techniques provide secure transmission of confidential images. Among the security requirements, authentication and confidentiality are the most essential ones. S-DES fulfills the confidentiality requirement and Reversible Watermarking provides the authentication that can retrieve the original image and the watermark. In this paper, the image to be secured is watermarked using a watermark image and then encrypted with S-DES (Simple-Data Encryption Standard) algorithm. This encrypted image is decrypted by applying S-DES decryption first and then removing the watermark. In addition to this, the image security approach confirms the secrecy of the image.