US Patent 9667551 Policy enforcement proxy

Systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for implementing a policy enforcement proxy are disclosed. A data packet associated with a source endpoint group and a destination endpoint group is received at a network device. The network device performs a policy lookup based on the source endpoint group and the destination endpoint group. The network device determines that the policy is not available and in response, modifies the data packet and forwards it to a policy enforcement proxy.