Power line communication (PLC) network nodes using cipher then segment security

A power line communication (PLC) hardware device for generating frames to be transmitted to a destination node in a power line communication (PLC) network, comprising:

• a processor coupled to a memory, configure to:
• generate a data payload comprising data to be sent to the destination PLC hardware node;
• encrypting the data payload before segmentation to form an encrypted data payload;
• divide the encrypted data payload into two or more encrypted data payload segments;
• create a frame for each of the encrypted data payload segments, each frame comprising a message integrity code;
• create a segment identifier for each frame using the message integrity code and an authentication key shared with the destination PLC hardware node;
• and
• add a segment identifier to each frame;
• and
• transmitting the frames with segment identifiers to the destination PLC hardware node, wherein the message integrity code is a 16-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value, and the first 16-bits of the output value are used to create the segment identifier.