“Sec-KeyD” an efficient key distribution protocol for critical infrastructures

Abstract

The strength of cryptographic techniques depend on the security of keys and on the strength of encryption algorithms. In symmetric key encryption, two communicating parties share a secret key that should not be known to others. Furthermore, frequent key changes are needed to avoid the attackers from learning the key. Most of the networks are now connected to the Internet and all the information, including exchange of keys, flow through it. Therefore, key distribution is one of the major challenges in communication and network security. This problem becomes more complex when the systems have certain constraints like limited computation power, low bandwidth etc. This paper presents an efficient key distribution scheme for critical infrastructure such as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) running on constraint environment.