Entity authentication is the procedure of mutual authentication of UE or USIM and the network.

In this tutorial following topics are discussed:

• What is Entity Authentication?
• Authentication Vectors Generation
• Authentication Procedure
• Message sequence from UE point of view

The security architecture in UMTS is divided into four main parts:

1. User identity confidentiality
2. Entity authentication
3. Data integrity
4. Ciphering or confidentiality

In this tutorial User identity confidentiality is covered.