Principles of the invention provide one or more secure key management protocols for use in a communication environment such as a conferencing system. For example, a method for managing a conference between two or more parties in a communication system comprises the following steps. An identity based authenticated key exchange operation is performed between a conference management element of the communication system and each of the two or more parties seeking to participate in the conference, wherein messages exchanged between the conference management element and the two or more parties are encrypted based on respective identities of recipients of the messages, and further wherein the conference management element receives from each party during the key authentication operation a random key component that is computed based on a random number selected by the party. The conference management element sends to each party a set comprising the random key components computed by the parties. The conference management element receives from each party a random group key component, wherein the random group key component is computed by each party via a computation based on the random number used by the party during the key authentication operation and the random key components computed by a subset of others of the two or more parties seeking to participate in the conference. The conference management element sends to each party a set comprising the random group key components computed by the parties such that each party can compute the same group key for use in communicating with each other party through the conference management element.