AUTOMATED METHOD FOR SECURELY ESTABLISHING SIMPLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL VERSION 3 (SNMPv3) AUTHENTICATION AND PRIVACY KEYS

A Manager Station having a first digital certificate, the Manager Station comprising:

• a processor designed to generate a simple network management protocol (SNMP) configuration file, wherein the SNMP configuration file comprises SNMP authentication keys to be used by the Manager Station and an Agent Station for authentication, and SNMP encryption keys to be used by the Manager Station and the Agent Station for encrypting communications between the Manager Station and the Agent Station, and designed to mutually authenticate with an Agent Station having a second digital certificate to establish a secure session between the Manager Station and the Agent Station based on the first digital certificate and the second digital certificate;
• a receiver designed to receive a request from the Agent Station for a secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) with the Manager Station;
• an encryption engine designed to encrypt the SNMP configuration file at the Manager Station;
• and
• a transmitter designed to transmit the encrypted SNMP configuration file to the Agent Station.

An Agent Station having a first digital certificate, the Agent Station comprising:

• a processor designed to:
• mutually authenticate with a Manager Station having a second digital certificate to establish a secure session between the Manager Station and the Agent Station based on the first digital certificate and the second digital certificate, and generate a request for a secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) with the Manager Station;
• a transmitter designed to transmit the request from the Agent Station to the Manager Station, wherein the processor is designed to establish a secure session between the Manager Station and the Agent Station based on the first digital certificate and the second digital certificate;
• a receiver designed to receive an encrypted simple network management protocol (SNMP) configuration file from the Manager Station, wherein the encrypted SNMP configuration file comprises encrypted SNMP authentication keys to be used by the Manager Station and the Agent Station for authentication;
• and encrypted SNMP encryption keys to be used by the Manager Station and the Agent Station for encrypting communications between the Manager Station and the Agent Station;
• and
• a decryption engine designed to decrypt the encrypted SNMP configuration file to generate SNMP authentication keys and SNMP privacy keys.