A method for managing a conference between two or more parties comprises an identity based authenticated key exchange between a conference management element and each of the two or more parties seeking to participate in the conference. Messages exchanged between the conference management element and the two or more parties are encrypted based on respective identities of recipients of the messages. The method comprises the conference management element receiving from each party a random group key component. The random group key component is computed by each party based on a random number used by the party during the key authentication operation and 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 the random group key components computed by the parties such that each party can compute the same group key.