Patent ID: 8365259

Claim:
A network security system, comprising: a plurality of processing nodes communicatively coupled to an authority node via a network, each of the plurality of processing nodes and the authority node are separately connected to the network, wherein the plurality of processing nodes and the authority node comprising a distributed security system, and the authority node is configured to store and distribute policy data to each of the plurality of processing nodes, each processing node comprising a processing node manager configured to perform operations comprising: identifying a content item; generating a security request for the content item, the security request comprising one or more time constraints based on security data information value over time; determining whether a first security operation for the security request can be performed within the one or more time constraints; and transmitting the security request to the authority node if the processing node determines that the first security operation can be performed within the one or more time constraints; performing a second security operation on the content item at the processing node if the processing node manager determines that the first security operation can not be performed within the one or more time constraints.