AN EFFICIENT APPROACH FOR REVERSIBLE DATA HIDING STEGANOGRAPHY COMBINED WITH CRYPTOGRAPHY

Information security is essential in preventing unauthorised access, destruction, or scrutiny of sensitive data. As multimedia information is being used in a variety of industries, it is crucial to protect the security of such sensitive data. Steganography, which includes obscuring information within other data without the cover information changing noticeably, is one method for protecting data. Contrarily, cryptography is an encryption method that turns data into an unreadable format known as a cypher. In terms of offering security, steganography and cryptography both have their own benefits and drawbacks. It is advantageous to combine cryptography and steganography to further increase security, resulting in a multi-layer security model. The suggested method tries to add an extra degree of protection by combining both techniques. The private data is encrypted with cryptography, and then steganography is used to hide it within another carrier of data. The information is kept secure even when being transmitted over a non-secure connection thanks to this combination strategy. The suggested work improves the security of sensitive data by utilising the advantages of steganography and cryptography. The information is jumbled and rendered unintelligible to unauthorised parties thanks to the encryption provided by cryptography. Steganography offers a further layer of camouflage at the same time, making the existence of buried information nearly unnoticeable. By combining these methods, a strong, multi-layered security model is created, making it more difficult for attackers to access or compromise the sensitive data. The proposed technique tries to combine steganography and cryptography to add an additional degree of security for private data. This combination strategy provides improved security and guarantees data transfer over insecure networks while preventing unauthorised access and maintaining data confidentiality.