Sensor networks (peer-to-peer) are designed to automate production processes and monitoring processes. Therefore, the elements of sensor networks are characterized by the presence of centralized control, and the possibility of interacting directly with each other. An important criterion for the operation of the sensor network is the speed of its responds to change external factors. The time for performing the service operations during the interaction of the sensors should be minimal. In this article, we examine the known authentication methods used to ensure the security of the ongoing messaging processes over the network. The analysis of their effectiveness is presented, the tendencies of the modern development of the protocols are indicated. The problem of a relatively long time of authentication when using existing methods is defined, as well as a method for shortening the execution time of the authentication procedure. The experiment and a comparative analysis of the speed of existing and proposed authentication algorithms were carried out, during which the advantage of the proposed method was revealed, which made it possible to shorten the authentication time by more than 7 times.