Network-Aware Security for Group Communications fills a growing need in the research community for a reference that describes the state-of-the-art in securing group communications in emerging networks and for future applications. The growth of multi-user services makes it essential that a complementary suite of security solutions are deployed in order to protect these services from a broad spectrum of security threats that are unique to group communications. This book is focused on tailoring security solutions to the underlying network architecture (such as the wireless cellular network, or ad hoc and sensor networks), or to targeted applications using methods tailored for that application (such as multimedia multicasts). The authors focus the discussion on two fundamental security issues for group communications: providing efficient key management for providing confidentiality, and providing authentication for group services.

Group-oriented communications will play a significant role in the next generation of networks as many services, such as pay-per-view media broadcasts and the delivery of network control messages, will rely upon the ability to reliably deliver data simultaneously to a large group of users. As these networks become increasingly pervasive and these multi-user services become increasingly ubiquitous, it will become essential that a complementary suite of security solutions are deployed in order to protect these services from a broad spectrum of security threats that are unique to group communications.

This book aims to fill a growing need in the research community for a reference that describes the state of the art in securing group communications. Network-Aware Security for Group Communications focuses on tailoring the security solution to the underlying network architecture (such as the wireless cellular network or the ad hoc/sensor network), or to the application using the security methods (such as multimedia multicasts).