On the automatic establishment of security relations for devices

The deployment of devices at remote or distributed locations is a typical scenario e.g. in large enterprise networks or industrial applications. In the deployment of a device identification of the device and the establishment of security relations (trust) between the device and other elements of the infrastructure is crucial. Usually, the process requires either to pre-configure the device or to let administrators physically access the device for configuration. Both options induce costs. For functional configurations and software distribution zero configuration solutions are available. One important step hereby is the establishment of trust into the individual device by the device owner. This trust establishment requires in typical schemes a large organizational involvement of the device owner resp. operator. The approach presented in this paper addresses the step of initial trust establishment.