Improved Media Security using Customized Standard Encryption Schemes

With the unprecedented growth of multimedia applications, transmission of voluminous data over heterogeneous networks is frequently required. In addition, many important services require secure exchange of data between mobile nodes and resource constrained networks. Standard encryption schemes designed for normal applications are not suitable for securing fast streaming media under these environments. We propose a new scheme that makes use of quasi group based look-up operations followed by reduced number of rounds of existing encryption algorithms like SMS4 or AES. Depending upon the transmission-rate and available resources, the scheme can be customized by adjusting its different parameters. Observations taken on images using the proposed scheme show drastic improvement with higher entropy and more uniformly scrambled image blocks. Results prove that our scheme provides adequate security for multimedia applications under different environments besides being computationally more efficient as compared to the standard schemes.