Survey on Information Hiding Techniques and Analysis of Quality Assessment Parameters

Due to the increasing demand of various internet applications such as voice over IP (VOIP), audio conferencing etc. it is required that the data is transmitted in a more secure and robust manner. Direct transmission of data over the communication channel is not secure as it can be easily manipulated and is prone to interception by eavesdroppers. So as an attractive solution to these issues, various approaches like steganography, cryptography and watermarking are highlighted. Efficient secrecy can be achieved by using various novel steganographic approaches. In this paper, the primary focus is on the basics of steganography and a detailed evaluation scheme to test the robustness of the steganographic data on various grounds like subjective, objective and comparison criteria. The performance of the steganographic data is done on the basis of robustness, secrecy and the amount of data to be hided. At the end the focus is on the objectives and applications of the steganographic system. Keywords— cryptography, evaluation, steganography, VOIP, watermarking