In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a large number of nodes are densely deployed in an open environment to gather some useful required information. These nodes are small in size, operating on limited processing capabilities with scarce working memory and battery life and not very powerful radio transceivers. They can only communicate with each other through wireless media. Radio waves are insecure in nature; therefore, by using such waves for communication there are always opportunities for different attacks on the network. Most wireless techniques are founded on the cluster-based sensor network. Forwarding cluster head's (CHs) data in a secure manner is very important because CHs collect data from the cluster members and send it to the sink node or base station. For securing CH's data, we propose a mechanism termed ICMDS (Inter-Cluster Multiple Key Distribution Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks), which enables the securing of the entire network. In ICMDS, we use two phases of security implementations for the sensor node's authenticity while communicating with the CH. A recovery phenomena is also stated at the time when a CH ceases to function due to its high energy consumption. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.