Cloud DPP ® Solution for Public Clouds

Wi-Fi Easy Connect supports mutual authentication.  However, the required steps and complexity of securely transferring a public key to the device are described here.

Small business or residential users can also benefit from the increased security of mutual authentication without requiring transfer of a public key to the device, where:

• the cloud public key used by the device for mutual authentication could be for a cloud network and recorded in devices during manufacturing or distribution, and 
• a cloud network could record and authenticate with the corresponding cloud private key.  

Thus, device manufacturers can simply record a plurality of different cloud public keys along with the device  PKI keys already required by Wi-Fi Easy Connect.  An analogy of public keys recorded in the device would be the set of root certificate authority public keys already included with operating systems and mobile devices.  

In this manner, although the device public key would be readily available for scanning, the device would not be configured until the provisioning mobile phone had separately authenticated with a cloud service. Thus, higher value or more sensitive equipment for consumers could be protected from unauthorized configuration.  Many other benefits for consumers, cloud networks, and device manufacturers are provided as well from "out of the box" mutual authentication support for Wi-Fi Easy Connect.

Below is an overview of Cloud DPP for consumer use with public cloud networks: