[Paper Review] Information Security in Health Care Centre Using Cryptography and Steganography

Abdulhammed Opeyemi Babatunde, A. J. Taiwo+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 15, 2018

Big Data Technologies and Applications5 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a hybrid information security framework for healthcare centers by combining 3DES encryption with LSB-based steganography to protect sensitive medical data. Implemented in Java, the system ensures confidentiality and integrity during storage and transmission, demonstrating reliable and secure management of electronic patient records through simulation results.

ABSTRACT

As the volume of medicinal information stored electronically increase, so do the need to enhance how it is secured. The inaccessibility to patient record at the ideal time can prompt death toll and also well degrade the level of health care services rendered by the medicinal professionals. Criminal assaults in social insurance have expanded by 125% since 2010 and are now the leading cause of medical data breaches. This study therefore presents the combination of 3DES and LSB to improve security measure applied on medical data. Java programming language was used to develop a simulation program for the experiment. The result shows medical data can be stored, shared, and managed in a reliable and secure manner using the combined model.

Motivation & Objective

• Address the rising threat of cyberattacks in healthcare, which have increased by 125% since 2010 and now rank as the leading cause of medical data breaches.
• Mitigate risks associated with delayed or denied access to patient records, which can lead to adverse health outcomes or fatalities.
• Develop a robust, dual-layered security mechanism that combines strong encryption with data hiding to protect medical information from unauthorized access and exposure.
• Ensure reliable and secure storage, sharing, and management of electronic health records (EHRs) in clinical environments.

Proposed method

• Employ 3DES (Triple Data Encryption Standard) as the primary encryption algorithm to secure medical data at rest and in transit.
• Apply Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography to embed the encrypted medical data into digital cover objects such as images, concealing the presence of sensitive information.
• Design and implement a simulation program in Java to model the end-to-end workflow of encryption, steganographic embedding, and data retrieval.
• Use digital images as cover media to hide encrypted medical records, ensuring that the steganographic payload remains undetectable to unauthorized users.
• Validate the system’s security and integrity through simulation, analyzing the confidentiality and imperceptibility of the hidden data.
• Integrate both cryptographic and steganographic layers to provide defense-in-depth, minimizing exposure risks even if one layer is compromised.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Can the combination of 3DES and LSB steganography effectively protect electronic health records from unauthorized access and data breaches in healthcare settings?
• RQ2 How does the dual-layer approach of encryption and steganography enhance data confidentiality compared to using either technique alone?
• RQ3 To what extent does the steganographic embedding process preserve the visual quality of cover images without raising suspicion?
• RQ4 Can the system reliably recover the original medical data after steganographic extraction, ensuring data integrity?
• RQ5 How effective is the proposed framework in preventing detection of hidden medical data by attackers?

Key findings

• The hybrid 3DES and LSB-based steganography model successfully secures medical data during storage and transmission, ensuring confidentiality and integrity.
• The simulation results confirm that encrypted data can be reliably embedded into digital images using LSB without significant degradation in image quality.
• The system enables secure sharing and management of electronic patient records while concealing the existence of sensitive data from potential attackers.
• The dual-layer approach significantly reduces the risk of data exposure, even if the steganographic carrier is intercepted.
• The implementation in Java demonstrates the feasibility and practicality of the proposed framework in real-world healthcare environments.