A Novel Secure Key Management Module for Hierarchical Clustering Wireless Sensor Networks

Secure key management is crucial to meet the security goals to prevent the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) being compromised by an adversary. Owing to ad-hoc nature and resource limitations of sensor networks, provisioning a right key management is challenging. In this paper we present a Novel Secure Key Management (NSKM) module providing an efficient scalable post-distribution key establishment that allows the hierarchical clustering topology platform to provision acceptable security services. To the best of our knowledge this module is the first implemented security module for wireless sensor networks that provisions reasonable resistance against replay and node capture attacks. Furthermore, it provides highly lightweight and scalable scheme. Also it is acceptable to be used in a wireless sensor network of thousands of sensor nodes.