The need for securing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is essential especially in mission critical fields such as military and medical applications. Security techniques that are used to secure any network depend on the security requirements that should be achieved to protect the network from different types of attacks. Furthermore, the characteristics of wireless networks should be taken into consideration when applying security techniques to these networks. In this paper, energy efficient Security Model for Tree-based Routing protocols (SMTR) is proposed. In SMTR, different attacks that could face any tree-based routing protocol in WSNs are studied to design a security reference model that achieves authentication and data integrity using either Message Authentication Code (MAC) or Digital Signature (DS) techniques. The SMTR communication and processing costs are mathematically analyzed. Moreover, SMTR evaluation is performed by firstly, evaluating several MAC and DS techniques by applying them to tree-based routing protocol and assess their efficiency in terms of their power requirements. Secondly, the results of this assessment are utilized to evaluate SMTR phases in terms of energy saving, packet delivery success ratio and network life time.