Information security with optical processing, such as the double random phase encoding and the Gabor transform (GT) has been investigated by various researchers. We present a two-dimensional (2-D) generalization of the one-dimensional GT. This 2-D GT is applied to encrypt digital images in this paper. The scaling factors of the GT can be used as new keys, providing a new encryption system with a high security characteristics. This method can encrypt and protect the information of the digital images with a high security for information processing systems.