Patent ID: 7788480

Claim:
A method of secure communication comprising: establishing a secure tunnel between a server of an associated network and a peer using an encryption algorithm that establishes a server encryption key possessed by the server and a peer encryption key possessed by the peer; authenticating the peer with the server over the secured tunnel establishing a server authentication key possessed by the server and a peer authentication key possessed by the peer; hashing the server encryption key and the server authentication key to produce a first hash; hashing the peer encryption key and the peer authentication key to produce a second hash; verifying by the server that the peer possesses the same encryption and authentication keys as the server by comparing the first hash with the second hash; distributing a network access credential from the server to the peer using the secured tunnel, responsive to the verifying the peer possesses the same encryption and authentication keys as the server; and signaling an authorization failure to the peer in accordance with the distributing of the network access credential, prior to the peer authenticating with the associated network using the distributed network access credential, and denying by the server access to the network by the peer until the peer authenticates with the associated network using the distributed network access credential.