US Patent 10419394 Providing scalable cloud-based security services

The disclosed embodiments disclose techniques for providing a cloud-based security service. During operation, a dispatcher virtual machine (VM) executing in a cloud data center receives a network request from a remote enterprise client. The dispatcher VM executes multiple docker containers, including a set of ingress docker containers that decode the request and then forward it to a session router docker container that in turn forwards the request to a set of security service VMs. After these security service VMs have analyzed the contents of the request and determined that the request is valid and permitted, a SNAT docker container then sends the request out to an untrusted network to be serviced.