Data security issues, cryptographic protection methods, and the use of cellular neural networks and cellular automata

The goal of this contribution is threefold: (1) to review the basic needs for information security in our modern society; (2) to show how these needs can be satisfied using cryptographic methods (this is basically a review of the state of the art of cryptography); and (3) to study the potentials of cellular automata (CA) and cellular neural networks (CNN) for implementing these cryptographic protection methods. It is clear that the main advantages of CA and CNN technology are the intrinsic speed and the narrow link between the CNN hardware and the medium (still or moving images)