Enhancing data security using DES-based cryptography and DCT-based steganography

The security and privacy of the data transmitted is an important aspect of the exchange of information on the Internet network. Cryptography and Steganography are two of the most commonly used digital data security techniques. In this research, we proposed the combination of the cryptographic method with Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm and the steganographic method with Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to develop a digital data security application. The application can be used to secure document data in Word, Excel, Powerpoint or PDF format. Data encrypted with DES algorithm and further hidden in image cover using DCT algorithm. The results showed that the quality of the image that has been inserted (stego-image) is still in a good category with an average PSNR value of 46.9 dB. Also, the experiment results show that the average computational time of 0.75 millisecond/byte, an average size increase of 4.79 times and a success rate of 58%. This research can help solve the problem of data and information security that will be sent through a public network like the internet.