Managing enrollment of digital identities for secure air-to-ground communication sessions

A line-replaceable unit (LRU) in an aircraft, comprising:

• a memory including a session manager executable on at least one processor, configured to transmit a request for a public certificate to a ground-based server to establish a digital identity;
• and a certificate validator executable on the at least one processor, configured to:
• validate the public certificate from the ground-based server;
• and generate an enrollment status message including a status code to transmit to the ground-based server for performing an action based on the validation of the public certificate.

A ground-based server for communicating with airborne units, comprising:

• a memory including a communication interface executable on at least one processor, configured to receive a request to establish a digital identity from a line-replaceable unit (LRU) of an aircraft;
• and an enrollment engine executable on the at least one processor, configured to:
• transmit a public certificate from a certificate authority responsive to the request from the LRU;
• and perform an action, the action performed in accordance with a status code indicated by an enrollment status message received from the LRU subsequent to the transmission of the public certificate, the status code indicating a result of a validation of the public certificate by the LRU.