Patent ID: 7337314

Claim:
A method comprising: allocating a first plurality of security processing resources within a cryptographic processor to a first type of data traffic associated with a first type of security protocol and a first service level defined by a first level of guaranteed processing bandwidth; allocating a second plurality of security processing resources within the cryptographic processor to a second type of data traffic associated with a second type of security protocol and a second service level defined by a second level of guaranteed processing bandwidth, wherein the second level of guaranteed processing bandwidth is different from the first level of guaranteed processing bandwidth, the first and second plurality of security processing resources comprise a plurality of cryptographic execution cores logically separated into first and second groups, respectively, and the first type of data traffic is data traffic requiring processing according to the first type of security protocol and wherein the second type of data traffic is data traffic requiring processing according to the second type of security protocol; monitoring load on the first plurality of security processing resources and the second plurality of security processing resources as the first and second types of data traffic are processed; and reallocating some of the first plurality of security processing resources from processing the first type of data traffic to processing the second type of data traffic if detected load on the second plurality of resources is above a specified threshold value, wherein said reallocating some of the first plurality of resources to the second plurality of resources comprises reallocating execution cores from the first group to the second group.