Patent ID: 9559850
Date: 2017-01-31
CPC Classifications: H04L,Y04S

Claim:
1. A method to establish secure communications to manage components of a control system, the method comprising: receiving a request to join a first hardware component to a cluster of hardware components; verifying the first hardware component based on a class of the first hardware component by matching the class to a predetermined list of expected classes; generating a signature using a system key to sign a public key and the class of the first hardware component; marking a command from the first hardware component with the signature; establishing a secure communication path between the first hardware component and a second hardware component from the cluster based on the signature; transmitting the command between the first hardware component and the second hardware component through the secure communication path; and preventing a transmission and an execution of another command associated with the first hardware component in response to a determination that the other command lacks the signature.