Patent attributes
The present disclosure describes systems and methods for authenticating a called party during the initialization stage of establishing a secure telecommunication channel to provide assurances to the initiator that they are communicating with whom they intended. A first user issues a challenge that includes a nonce to one or more second user devices. The second user's secure collaboration application receives the challenge, signs the nonce included in the challenge, and sends the response with the signed nonce to the first user. The first user receives the response and determines whether the signature of the first nonce is valid. If the signature is not valid, the first user's secure collaboration application terminates the secure telecommunication. However, if the signature received in the response is valid, the first user's secure collaboration application begins exchanging encrypted telecommunication data with the second user over a secure telecommunication channel.