On the Combination of Security and Error Control Codes

The concept of combining security and error control codes is appealing, especially in applications where latency is a concern, or resources are limited. However, there are many difficulties in combining these two coding paradigms. Often, security and error control work at cross-purposes to each other, making combined schemes based on existing security models difficult to develop. Thus, most of the combined schemes proposed use different techniques for applying security, and the true strength of these techniques has not been well-tested. Existing combined codes pose many issues with respect to practicality and implementation, as well. In some algorithms, there can be a trade-off between security and error correction. However, even in systems which propose both, the lack of confidence in the security aspect is also a sort of trade-off for the error-correction capability. A system that offers strong security and strong error correction has yet to be discovered.