In this paper a Joint Perceptual Encryption and Watermarking scheme (JPEW) has been proposed. The technique has been incorporated in the JPEG compression standard. Perceptual Encryption is required in many of the multimedia content preview applications. On the other hand, watermarking is used to ensure the integrity of the multimedia content. There is always a need of an efficient technique that reduces the overhead of watermarking and encryption in realtime. The proposed technique performs the functions of encryption and watermarking simultaneously based on their respective key. The perceptual encryption scheme is based on AC component. The watermarking technique is unlike conventional watermarking techniques which are generally based on manipulation of the AC component in DCT domain. The watermarking approach is to utilize the DC component that is perceptually significant part, to embed the watermark. The watermark embedding is carried out using bitplanes of DC component. Moreover, a performance evaluation is carried out for the proposed scheme. © 2010 IEEE.