US Patent 7275163 Asynchronous configuration

One or more embodiments of the invention provide a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for providing access to digital services. Configuration information that has been transmitted asynchronously is received in a security component (that is configured to control access to the digital services). A hardware state machine (that comprises custom logic that is used to control access to the digital services) in the security component is then dynamically reconfigured based on the configuration information.