Security lifecycle management of devices in a communications network

Described herein are complete lifecycle management processes for IoT/M2M devices, which are commissioned and de-commissioned in a given system without requiring a user/human administrator. A delegated life-cycle management process is described, wherein devices rely upon a delegatee, which may have more computing and battery resources than the devices. Further, a Trust Enabling Infrastructure (TEI) is described herein, which may belong to a different trusted domain than the given device and its delegatee. A device in response to powering on for the first time, registers with a trust enabling infrastructure (TEI) and generates one or more credentials based on the registration with the TEI so as to define a trust relationship with the TEI. After the registration, the device receives one or more security components and policies from the TEI and installs the one or more security components so as to define a secure environment.