Patent ID: 7929703
Filing Date: 2011-04-19
Classification: H04L,H04W

Abstract:
1. A system for managing security keys in a wireless network, comprising: a service provider certification authority (SPCA) configured to receive a root public key of a manufacturer certification authority(MCA) and configured to manage digital SPCA certificates and files used by a new network element (NE) and legacy NEs to communicate securely within the network, a signing server (SS) configured to provide signing services to the new NEs and legacy NEs and configured to authenticate the new and legacy NEs to the network, and an element manager (EM) configured to provide security key and digital certificate management, provisioning and initialization of any new NEs or legacy NEs that are directly or indirectly managed by the element manager, wherein to authenticate a legacy NE which is not installed with a digital MCA certificate, the signed digital MCA certificate being used for authentication of the new NE's security key pair to enable secure communications with other NEs in the network: