Improving Steganosystem Efficiency as an Integral Part of Ensuring the Routine Operation of Energy Infrastructure Facilities

Steganography currently holds a vital position in information security, reflecting its growing importance within the energy industry. Steganographic methods are employed to ensure data integrity and authentication in Smart Grids; for the authentication of thermograms and diagnostic images obtained during power line monitoring, etc. The effectiveness of a steganographic system fundamentally depends on the properties of the container used, making the task of container selection highly relevant, yet one that has lacked a satisfactory solution until now. The objective of this work is to increase the efficiency of a steganographic system by developing a method for selecting a container from a given set of digital images, ensuring optimal or near-optimal visual quality of the stego-message, regardless of the container format or the steganographic method employed. In this study, steganographic efficiency is defined as a quantitative assessment of the perceptual reliability of the generated stego-message, evaluated using the Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM). This objective was achieved by addressing the following tasks: introducing the concept of the local (pixel-wise) texture degree of an image and justifying a selection criterion based on the relative number of pixels with the most frequent local texture degree value. The most significant result of this research is the provision of a mechanism for selecting a container that facilitates the formation of high-visual-quality stego-messages. The importance of the obtained result lies in the fact that the developed selective method ensures an increase in steganographic system efficiency compared to the use of a random container. The maximum recorded increase in efficiency was 31.6%.