A hybrid steganography framework using DCT and GAN for secure data communication in the big data era.

The growth of the internet and big data has spurred the demand for more extensive information hoarding to store and distribute information. In today's digital era, ensuring the security of data transmission is paramount. Advancements in digital technology have facilitated the proliferation of high-resolution graphics over the Internet, raising security concerns and enabling unauthorized access to sensitive data. Researchers have increasingly explored steganography as a reliable method for secure communication because it plays a crucial role in concealing and safeguarding sensitive information. This study introduces a novel and comprehensive steganography framework using the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the deep learning algorithm, generative adversarial network. By leveraging deep learning techniques in both spatial and frequency domains, the proposed hybrid architecture offers a robust solution for applications requiring high levels of data integrity and security. While conventional steganography methods are typically classified into spatial and transform domains, extensive research and analysis demonstrate that the hybrid approach surpasses individual techniques in performance. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed steganography approach, showcasing superior visual image quality with a mean square error (MSE) of 93.30%, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 58.27%, root mean squared error (RMSE) of 96.10%, and structural similarity index measure (SSIM) of 94.20%, in comparison to existing leading methodologies. The proposed model achieved reconstruction accuracies of 96.2% using Xu Net and 95.7% with SR Net. By combining DCT with deep learning algorithms, the proposed approach overcomes the limitations of spatial domain methods, offering a more flexible and effective steganography solution. Furthermore, simulation results confirm that the proposed technique outperforms state-of-the-art methods across key performance metrics, including MSE, PSNR, SSIM, and RMSE.