Abstract. Digital watermarking technology is one of the main means to realize the copyright protection and authentication of digital works in the information age, and many excellent watermarking algorithms have been proposed to achieve different performances in different application. But, attackers also can make use of the design fault of these algorithms to realize their illegal purpose, such as embedding without authorization, detecting without authorization or removing without authorization, and the security problem of watermarking system is becoming more and more serious. In this paper, the security problems of digital watermarking algorithms are summarized, the research status of the watermarking security is analyzed, and many typical security schemes are studied, and then a useful scheme based on side information theory and cryptology technique is proposed, including three feasible strategies in different stages of the watermarking system.