A device is provided to perform secure operations in a network that includes multiple devices. The device comprises multiple processor cores; multiple physical ports to receive packets; a system interconnect and a network security engine. The network security engine is operative to: extract a key from a packet received from a physical port among the physical ports; in response to a first determination that the key does not match a stored key in the device, block the packet from entering the system interconnect through the physical port; and in response to the first determination that the key matches the stored key and in response to a second determination that one or more identifiers extracted from the packet do not match stored information in the device, block the packet from entering an identified processor core among the processor cores that is to be accessed by the packet.