Identity-Based Key Management

Overview

The advantages of Identity-based Key Management (IDKM) are:

• the authentication of a user’s ID is done at decryption time, which matches a user’s expectations that authentication is needed to retrieve information
• keys are short lived
• making a new public key is nearly free
• the time between identity binding and key issuance is short, as opposed to bind-first and issuer-later systems; and
• IDKM provides a model for thinking about application level key management.