The integration of wireless sensor networks with different network systems gives rise to many research challenges to ensure security, privacy and trust in the overall architecture. The main contribution of this paper is a generic security, privacy and trust framework providing context-aware adaptability, flexibility and scalability which allows customisation of wireless sensor networks to a diverse set of application spaces. Suitable protocols and mechanisms are identified, which when combined according to the framework form a complete toolbox solution which fits the architecture of Beyond 3G environments. Performance evaluation results demonstrate the feasibility and estimate the benefits of the security framework for a variety of scenarios. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.