Cloud-based data is safer than paper and client-server records. There are lots of security issues related to storage, which will make lots of security challenges. Cryptography is an essential tool that helps to assure our data accuracy. Cryptographic techniques can be employed to protect the data in the cloud environment. This paper presents a novel approach for data hiding inside images using both cryptography and steganography techniques. The proposed method utilizes the RC6 encryption algorithm to securely encrypt the data before embedding it into the image using steganography. The RC6 algorithm provides robust security by generating a secret key that is required to decrypt the hidden data. The steganography technique is used to embed the encrypted data into the least significant bits of the cover image to minimize distortion and make the hidden data imperceptible to the human eye. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of the high capacity of data hiding, low distortion, and strong security. This approach has various applications in the field of digital image security and can be used to transmit confidential data securely over untrusted networks.

Keywords: Cryptography, Steganography, RC6, Least Significant Bit (LSB), Data Hiding, Image Security.