A Systematic Review on Image Data Protection Methods

Securing data is the main goal of any data security system (DSS). Valuable data must be protected all the time and stored in a very highly secure data storage device. This need has become more critical due to the continuous growth of data size.  Furthermore, non-text data in the form of images, audio, and videos can now be transferred and processed easily and thus become part of sensitive data that needs to be protected. Since there is a need to secure and protect data in any form in order to keep them private and valid, it is expected that there would be many attempts already that have been proposed in the literature for this purpose. This paper reviews a group of these proposed strategies and methods that have been applied to different kinds of DSSs. Challenges and future trends of DSSs are also discussed. A number of main findings are grouped and organized as follows: (1) there are many different kinds of security techniques, each of which offers varying degrees of performance in terms of the amount of data and information that can be managed securely, (2) depending on the architecture of the proposed method, the tactics or strategies of the security system, the kinds of DSSs, as well as a few other factors, some methods are more appropriate for the storage of certain categories of data than others

Data Hiding and Its Applications

Data hiding techniques have been widely used to provide copyright protection, data integrity, covert communication, non-repudiation, and authentication, among other applications. In the context of the increased dissemination and distribution of multimedia content over the internet, data hiding methods, such as digital watermarking and steganography, are becoming increasingly relevant in providing multimedia security. The goal of this book is to focus on the improvement of data hiding algorithms and their different applications (both traditional and emerging), bringing together researchers and practitioners from different research fields, including data hiding, signal processing, cryptography, and information theory, among others

On the Development of Novel Encryption Methods for Conventional and Biometric Images

Information security refers to the technique of protecting information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption and modification. Governments, military, corporations, financial institutions, hospitals, and private businesses amass a great deal of confidential information about their employees, customers, products, research, and financial status. Most of this information is now collected, processed and stored on electronic media and transmitted across networks to other computers. Encryption clearly addresses the need for confidentiality of information, in process of storage and transmission. Popular application of multimedia technology and increasingly transmission ability of network gradually leads us to acquire information directly and clearly through images and hence the security of image data has become inevitable. Moreover in the recent years, biometrics is gaining popularity for security purposes in many applications. However, during communication and transmission over insecure network channels it has some risks of being hacked, modified and reused. Hence, there is a strong need to protect biometric images during communication and transmission. In this thesis, attempts have been made to encrypt image efficiently and to enhance the security of biometrics images during transmission. In the first contribution, three different key matrix generation methods invertible, involuntary, and permutation key matrix generation have been proposed. Invertible and involuntary key matrix generation methods solves the key matrix inversion problem in Hill cipher. Permutation key matrix generation method increases the Hill system’s security. The conventional Hill cipher technique fails to encrypt images properly if the image consists of large area covered with same colour or gray level. Thus, it does not hide all features of the image which reveals patterns in the plaintext. Moreover, it can be easily broken with a known plaintext attack revealing weak security. To address these issues two different techniques are proposed, those are advanced Hill cipher algorithm and H-S-X cryptosystem to encrypt the images properly. Security analysis of both the techniques reveals superiority of encryption and decryption of images. On the other hand, H-S-X cryptosystem has been used to instil more diffusion and confusion on the cryptanalysis. FPGA implementation of both the proposed techniques has been modeled to show the effectiveness of both the techniques. An extended Hill cipher algorithm based on XOR and zigzag operation is designed to reduce both encryption and decryption time. This technique not only reduces the encryption and decryption time but also ensures no loss of data during encryption and decryption process as compared to other techniques and possesses more resistance to intruder attack. The hybrid cryptosystem which is the combination of extended Hill cipher technique and RSA algorithm has been implemented to solve the key distribution problem and to enhance the security with reduced encryption and decryption time. Two distinct approaches for image encryption are proposed using chaos based DNA coding along with shifting and scrambling or poker shuffle to create grand disorder between the pixels of the images. In the first approach, results obtained from chaos based DNA coding scheme is shifted and scrambled to provide encryption. On the other hand in the second approach the results obtained from chaos based DNA coding encryption is followed by poker shuffle operation to generate the final result. Simulated results suggest performance superiority for encryption and decryption of image and the results obtained have been compared and discussed. Later on FPGA implementation of proposed cryptosystem has been performed. In another contribution, a modified Hill cipher is proposed which is the combination of three techniques. This proposed modified Hill cipher takes advantage of all the three techniques. To acquire the demands of authenticity, integrity, and non-repudiation along with confidentiality, a novel hybrid method has been implemented. This method has employed proposed modified Hill cipher to provide confidentiality. Produced message digest encrypted by private key of RSA algorithm to achieve other features such as authenticity, integrity, and non-repudiation To enhance the security of images, a biometric cryptosystem approach that combines cryptography and biometrics has been proposed. Under this approach, the image is encrypted with the help of fingerprint and password. A key generated with the combination of fingerprint and password and is used for image encryption. This mechanism is seen to enhance the security of biometrics images during transmission. Each proposed algorithm is studied separately, and simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate their performance. The security analyses are performed and performance compared with other competent schemes

Digital Signal Processing (Second Edition)

This book provides an account of the mathematical background, computational methods and software engineering associated with digital signal processing. The aim has been to provide the reader with the mathematical methods required for signal analysis which are then used to develop models and algorithms for processing digital signals and finally to encourage the reader to design software solutions for Digital Signal Processing (DSP). In this way, the reader is invited to develop a small DSP library that can then be expanded further with a focus on his/her research interests and applications. There are of course many excellent books and software systems available on this subject area. However, in many of these publications, the relationship between the mathematical methods associated with signal analysis and the software available for processing data is not always clear. Either the publications concentrate on mathematical aspects that are not focused on practical programming solutions or elaborate on the software development of solutions in terms of working ‘black-boxes’ without covering the mathematical background and analysis associated with the design of these software solutions. Thus, this book has been written with the aim of giving the reader a technical overview of the mathematics and software associated with the ‘art’ of developing numerical algorithms and designing software solutions for DSP, all of which is built on firm mathematical foundations. For this reason, the work is, by necessity, rather lengthy and covers a wide range of subjects compounded in four principal parts. Part I provides the mathematical background for the analysis of signals, Part II considers the computational techniques (principally those associated with linear algebra and the linear eigenvalue problem) required for array processing and associated analysis (error analysis for example). Part III introduces the reader to the essential elements of software engineering using the C programming language, tailored to those features that are used for developing C functions or modules for building a DSP library. The material associated with parts I, II and III is then used to build up a DSP system by defining a number of ‘problems’ and then addressing the solutions in terms of presenting an appropriate mathematical model, undertaking the necessary analysis, developing an appropriate algorithm and then coding the solution in C. This material forms the basis for part IV of this work. In most chapters, a series of tutorial problems is given for the reader to attempt with answers provided in Appendix A. These problems include theoretical, computational and programming exercises. Part II of this work is relatively long and arguably contains too much material on the computational methods for linear algebra. However, this material and the complementary material on vector and matrix norms forms the computational basis for many methods of digital signal processing. Moreover, this important and widely researched subject area forms the foundations, not only of digital signal processing and control engineering for example, but also of numerical analysis in general. The material presented in this book is based on the lecture notes and supplementary material developed by the author for an advanced Masters course ‘Digital Signal Processing’ which was first established at Cranfield University, Bedford in 1990 and modified when the author moved to De Montfort University, Leicester in 1994. The programmes are still operating at these universities and the material has been used by some 700++ graduates since its establishment and development in the early 1990s. The material was enhanced and developed further when the author moved to the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Loughborough University in 2003 and now forms part of the Department’s post-graduate programmes in Communication Systems Engineering. The original Masters programme included a taught component covering a period of six months based on two semesters, each Semester being composed of four modules. The material in this work covers the first Semester and its four parts reflect the four modules delivered. The material delivered in the second Semester is published as a companion volume to this work entitled Digital Image Processing, Horwood Publishing, 2005 which covers the mathematical modelling of imaging systems and the techniques that have been developed to process and analyse the data such systems provide. Since the publication of the first edition of this work in 2003, a number of minor changes and some additions have been made. The material on programming and software engineering in Chapters 11 and 12 has been extended. This includes some additions and further solved and supplementary questions which are included throughout the text. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out, that while every effort has been made by the author and publisher to provide a work that is error free, it is inevitable that typing errors and various ‘bugs’ will occur. If so, and in particular, if the reader starts to suffer from a lack of comprehension over certain aspects of the material (due to errors or otherwise) then he/she should not assume that there is something wrong with themselves, but with the author

Handbook of Mathematical Geosciences

This Open Access handbook published at the IAMG's 50th anniversary, presents a compilation of invited path-breaking research contributions by award-winning geoscientists who have been instrumental in shaping the IAMG. It contains 45 chapters that are categorized broadly into five parts (i) theory, (ii) general applications, (iii) exploration and resource estimation, (iv) reviews, and (v) reminiscences covering related topics like mathematical geosciences, mathematical morphology, geostatistics, fractals and multifractals, spatial statistics, multipoint geostatistics, compositional data analysis, informatics, geocomputation, numerical methods, and chaos theory in the geosciences