Key Management Mechanisms in Pay-TV Broadcasting Systems

Existing key management mechanisms for content access control in pay-tv broadcasting can be divided into two types, time-bound hierarchical key management and conditional access systems. A time-bound hierarchical key management scheme is a method to assign time-dependent encryption keys to a set of classes which have partially ordered hierarchy. On the other hand, conditional access systems provide the channel protection according to distinct business models. In this book, these two mechanisms are discussed.