A Review on Security Techniques in Image Steganography

Given the increased popularity of the internet, the exchange of sensitive information leads to concerns about privacy and security. Techniques such as steganography and cryptography have been employed to protect sensitive information. Steganography is one of the promising tools for securely exchanging sensitive information through an unsecured medium. It is a powerful tool for protecting a user's data, wherein the user can hide messages inside other media, such as images, videos, and audios (cover media). Image steganography is the science of concealing secret information inside an image using various techniques. The nature of the embedding process makes the hidden information undetectable to human eyes. The challenges faced by image steganography techniques include achieving high embedding capacity, good imperceptibility, and high security. These criteria are inter-related since enhancing one factor undermines one or more others. This paper provides an overview of existing research related to various techniques and security in image steganography. First, basic information in this domain is presented. Next, various kinds of security techniques used in steganography are explained, such as randomization, encryption, and region-based techniques. This paper covers research published from 2017 to 2022. This review is not exhaustive and aims to explore state-of-the-art techniques applied to enhance security, crucial issues in the domain, and future directions to assist new and current researchers.