Improving And Distributing Key Management On Mobile Networks

Forsberg, Dan
Dan Forsberg is expert in security, cloud, payment, and sw dev areas with DevSecOps experience. He led research projects almost 10 years in Nokia Research Center, including LTE Security design. At his current position at Poplatek as a Lead Security and Cloud Architect, he has achieved PCI DSS certifications and AWS cloud migrations.

The research address the problem of mobile network key management and authentication that negatively affects the handoff performance, adds overhead to the system in terms of key exchange signaling, authentication, and key distribution. The aim of the study is to improve the efficiency of the key management subsystem and to reduce investment pressure on core network elements. The novel SKC key management mechanism is the best key management mechanism among the ones we found in reducing signaling load from the KD and making the mobility system independent of the AP-KD link delay. It is a significant contribution to the mobile network key management with fast handoffs when separate keys for APs are required and has many useful applications. It is a generalization of the identity binding that SKC is using. Furthermore, the AAA architecture with SKC, certificates, and hardware-based security is a disruptive proposal and show how the mobile network KD can be distributed to the edge nodes. This research affected the LTE Security standardization and contributes to the research and development of home base stations, community and municipal Wi-Fi access points.