AbstractThis paper reviews the information theoretic characterization of security in broadcast channels, in which a transmitter has both public and confidential messages intended for multiple receivers. All messages must be successfully received by their intended receivers, and the confidential messages must be kept as secret as possible from non‐intended recipients. Various scenarios are considered in the context of two‐user broadcast channels, for which known results on the secrecy capacity region are reviewed and corresponding coding schemes for achieving rates in these regions are described. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.