This chapter discusses security for personal area networks (PANs). An overview of different PAN security issues and solutions is given. We define a PAN reference and trust model. A PAN security architecture based on the model is described. Especially we provide new solutions to the PAN device security initialisation problem using manual authentication techniques. We show that PAN key management can be substantially simplified using trust delegation or a personal 'Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)'. Internal PAN communication security as well as secure configuration and access control is discussed.

9.1 Introduction

The next generation of mobile communications is expected to be different from current systems. We foresee changes both for the type of accesses to the networks and the terminals used to access the networks. We expect future multi-function mobile terminals to consist of several different configurable components that may be worn about the body and are connected through local wireless communication. Hence, we address security problems for distributed dynamically configurable terminals. A distributed terminal consists of several components within physical proximity to each other and to the user or users. Components are interconnected with local communication links such as short-range wireless connections, for example, Bluetooth. This type of personal local network used to be called a Personal Area Network (PAN). We treat the security problems related to the configuration and communication in a PAN. This chapter is based on the work by the SHAMAN project [1].