Abstract: A networking device continuously and simultaneously receives multiple sign and verify requests, without a priori knowledge of their quantity, type, sequence, length, input data or frequency. The networking device performs the corresponding signature operations and verification operations according to a rule based configuration. Each received sign and verify request is broken into multiple tasks, which are placed into a task pool with priorities, and disassociated from their originating requests and from other tasks. Multiple execution agents (each one a separate general purpose compute unit with its own memory space) repeatedly and simultaneously processes next available tasks from the pool based on priority. Asynchronous worker routines in the agents can pre-calculate certain values for higher level task processing. The output from completed tasks is placed into a repository, and the results in the repository are processed to fulfill the multiple received requests at network line speed.