Wireless network specific (WN-specific) key can be used to provide access protection over the radio access link. A WN-specific key may be associated with (or assigned to) a wireless network, and distributed to access points of the wireless network, as well as to user equipments (UEs) following UE authentication. The WN-specific key is then used to encrypt/decrypt data transported over the radio access link. The WN-specific key can be used in conjunction with the UE-specific keys to provide multi-level access protection. In some embodiments, WN-specific keys are shared between neighboring wireless networks to reduce the frequency of key exchanges during handovers. Service-specific keys may be used to provide access protection to machine to machine (M2M) services. Group-specific keys may be used to provide access protection to traffic communicated between members of a private social network.
