Key management paradigm for mobile secure group communications: Issues, solutions, and challenges

Group communication has been increasingly used as an efficient communication mechanism for facilitating emerging applications that require packet delivery from one or more sources to multiple recipients. Due to insecure communication channels, group key management which is a fundamental building block for securing group communication, has received increasing attention recently. Developing group key management in highly dynamic environments faces additional challenges particularly in wireless mobile networks due to their inherent complexities. On one hand, the constraints of wireless devices in terms of resources scarcity, and on the other hand the mobility of group members increase the complexity of designing a group key management scheme. This article illustrates a survey of existing group key management schemes that specifically consider the host mobility issue in secure group communications in wireless mobile environments. The primary constraints and challenges introduced by wireless mobile environments are identified in order to show their critical influence in designing a secure group communication. The explored schemes are scrutinized and then compared against some pertinent criteria. Finally, the remaining challenges that should be tackled are outlined, and future research directions are also discussed.