IJIS-PDF 2018] 107 International Journal of Information Security, Privacy and Digital Forensics Vol. 2, No 1, December, 2018 Image Security Using Data Encryption Standard (DES) Secret Key-ciphering A.O Akinrotimi 1 , R.O Oladele 2 1,2 University of Ilorin, Ilorin Nigeria Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, PMB 1515, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. Abstract:- Encryption is used to transmit data securely on open networks. Information contents may be textual data or image data. Encryption of text or images, which cover the highest portion of multimedia file transfer, is most important, during secure transmission of information. Several techniques have been used to protect confidential image data from unauthorized access. In this paper, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm was used as an encryption method for iris images, the encryption and decryption speed and the memory used up in the process, being observed. The system, which was implemented using the MATLAB environment, indicates a slower time for encryption but a faster time for decryption using the DES algorithm, thus showing that it is faster to decrypt than to encrypt with the DES cipher key. This guarantees the security of images using the cipher key DES algorithm and thus establishes that the DES algorithm presented assures resilient security for the CASIA iris image. Keywords: Cryptography, Symmetric, Encryption, Decryption, Data hiding. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Nowadays, the sharing of images over network is increasing in large numbers and network security is becoming more important as the number of data being exchanged over the internet increases. More over the data that is relevant for the image is also sent along with it. Therefore, confidentiality and data integrity requires protecting the data against unauthorized access and use. This has resulted in an explosive growth of the field of information hiding. Data hiding is a technique that is used to hide information in digital media such as images, video, audio etc. This technique is also referred to as Cryptography. (Muthulakshmi P, 2016). 1 Cryptography not only protects data from theft or alteration, but can also be used for user authentication. There are, in general, three types of cryptographic schemes typically used to accomplish these goals: secret key (or symmetric) cryptography, public key (or asymmetric) cryptography, and hash functions. The rapid continuous increase in exchange of multimedia data