Cryptography and Steganography-A Survey

Digital communication has become an essential part of infrastructure nowadays, a lot of applications are Internet-based and it is important that communication be made secret. As a result, the security of information passed over an open channel has become a fundamental issue and therefore, the confidentiality and data integrity are required to protect against unauthorized access and use. This has resulted in an unstable growth in the field of information hiding. Cryptography and steganography are the two popular methods available to provide security. One hides the existence of the message and the other distorts the message itself. Using cryptography, the data is transformed into some other gibberish form and then the encrypted data is transmitted. In steganography, the data is embedded in an image file and the image file is transmitted. This paper focuses on the strength of combining cryptography and stegnography methods to enhance the security of communication over an open channel