Describe in your own words the differences between steganography, digital watermarking, and digital rights management.
Steganography, digital watermarking, and digital right management are certainly all related, however they differ in that they represent different levels, or facets of the information security process. Digital watermarking is a way of embedding hidden digital information on video, audio, and imaging, that denotes ownership of the information, or marks a piece of visual or audio information for copyright (Shih, 2008). These watermarks can be traced, according to a specific algorithm, in order to identify copyright infringement, or authenticate data use. These digital watermarks are a specific type of stenography. Steganography is more generally the act of concealing a file, message, image or video within another file, or creating a protected element or file within a file. As such, steganography is the practice used to place a digital watermark on an object (Cummins, Diskin, Lau & Parlett, 2004). Both are used in the process of digital rights management to protect the use of, and legal rights to, digital information.
References:
Cummins, J., Diskin, P., Lau, S. Parlett, R. (2004). Steganography And Digital Watermarking, Birmingham, AL: University of Birmingham, School of Computer Science.
Shih, F.Y. (2008). Digital watermarking and steganography: fundamentals and techniques. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis.
What factors affect the strength of an algorithm or cryptosystem? What factors affect the weakness?
There are eight key factors identified as effecting the comparative strength or weakness of an algorithm or cryptosystem: symmetric key length, pubic key length, key lifetime, amount of plaintext known to the attacker, strength or weakness of the security technologies implemented, randomness of generated keys, strength of the security protocols, and the security of key storage (Microsoft, 2016). Generally, the longer a key length, and the shorter a key lifetime, the stronger the algorithm is. Further, security should always be emphasized, and randomness encouraged.
References:
Microsoft (2016). Risk Factors for Cryptography Systems. Retrieved from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc961629.aspx
