Methods, systems, and an apparatus for generating and dispatching a flexible control key to be appended with the data packets while being dispatched across a plurality of software modules running on the integrated network security device, are provided. The control key is divided into two sections: an operations (ingress/egress) section, and an application section. The ingress section includes the invariable-ordered set of operations to be performed to the data packet at the device's input. The egress section includes the invariable-ordered set of operations to be performed to the data packet at the receiver's address. The application section includes the sequence of applications to be performed to the data packet while being processed by the integrated network security device. The operation section is encoded using bit encoding technique. The application section is encoded by using a binary operation encoding technique, which allows variable sequences of execution.