A method and apparatus for providing a key for secure communications is provided herein. During operation a node wishing to join a network, will authenticate with an authentication server and then derive a pairwise key (e.g., a Pair-wise Transient Key (PTK)) used for encryption of unicast traffic. The node will also create its own group transient key (GTK) for use in encrypting multicast or broadcast traffic. Once the GTK is generated, it will be provided to an authenticator as part of an association request message.