Patent ID: 8752047

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed by one or more processors, causes: in response to a client determining that digital content, originating from an external source, is to be received or processed by the client, the client identifying, without human intervention, one or more virtual machines, executing or to be executed on the client, into which the digital content is to be stored; wherein identifying the one or more virtual machines comprises the client consulting policy data, stored at the client, to determine a placement policy, a containment policy, and a persistence policy used in identifying the one or more virtual machines; wherein the containment policy identifies what network resources and client resources the one or more virtual machines can access, and the persistence policy identifies whether data stored in the one or more virtual machines is persistently stored; and wherein the placement policy specifies that the digital content should be stored by a virtual machine that has not yet been instantiated, wherein the policy data identifies a template for use in instantiating the particular virtual machine, and wherein the template describes characteristics of a virtual machine suitable for executable code originating from the external source.