Methods and arrangements to handle network messages containing security information are disclosed. Embodiments include transformations, code, state machines or other logic to handle network messages containing security information by configuring an application to generate messages containing security information. The configuring may include creating a data structure to store security information of network messages and storing security information, including a specification of a cryptographic key and a specification of a format to represent information about the cryptographic key in the data structure. The embodiments may also include dynamically linking to a runtime module, executing the runtime module, accessing the data structure to identify the cryptographic key and the format to represent the cryptographic key, storing security information in temporary storage based upon the identification of the cryptographic key, constructing a security token based upon the security information stored in temporary storage, and inserting the security token in a message.