Secure transmission of data by splitting image

Steganography is a method of hiding confidential data in various medias like audio, image etc. Cryptography techniques are also integrated with steganography for data encryption. But in existing systems, poor encryption techniques are used which provide low security to data and this encrypted data is directly transmitted. So if there is any intruder in the network, can directly decrypt the data using the key. Thus there arises the need to enhance the existing system´s security. To enhance the security, in this system the standard encryption method known as Advanced Encryption Security (AES), image split and random pixel embedding techniques are integrated before the data transmitted through the network. The data is encrypted in the system using AES and it is embedded in the least significant bit (LSB) of randomly selected pixels of image. After that the stego image is splitted into fragments on the basis of various intensity of RGB color component of pixel. Then the splitted parts are encrypted and transmitted to the receiver. So during the transmission, if there is any intruder in the network gets key and tries to decode the data, he only gets a portion of data. The sender informs the secret key to the receiver through email. The receiver extracts each image fragments and combined to form the stego image. Then the receiver decodes the secret data from the image. Thus the original image and secret data are received securely. The robustness of the system is evaluated through the histogram analysis and the system achieved target of improved imperceptibility with high PSNR of 60dB.