Patent ID: 8724812

Claim:
A method for establishing secure point-to-point communications, the method comprising: a controller, laying between a source and a destination endpoint, for assigning radio traffic channels to endpoint devices that communicate via a trunked radio system, performing: receiving, from the source endpoint over a secure control channel, a request for a traffic channel for confidential communications between the source endpoint and the destination endpoint, wherein a unique first symmetric key shared between the source and destination endpoints is used for the confidential communications; responsive to the request, obtaining a source public key certificate from a certificate repository and validating the source public key certificate; responsive to the request, providing a public key of the source over the secure control channel to the destination endpoint to enable securely transmitting a first symmetric key between the destination and the source; responsive to the request, assigning the traffic channel; receiving from the destination endpoint over the secure control channel the unique first symmetric key encrypted with the source public key; and providing to the source endpoint over the secure control channel the encrypted unique first symmetric key.