Method and apparatus for high agility cryptographic key manager

A method and apparatus for improved algorithm and key agility for a cryptosystem, comprising a CAM-type key manager. The key manager uses two memories, an index RAM and a key RAM, to virtualize each algorithm or key using pointers from the index RAM to the key RAM, allowing simple reference to algorithm/key pairs, and to dynamically allocate storage for keys. An autonomous free memory management design improves latency in future key write operations by transforming the search for free location addresses in the key RAM memory into a background task, and employing a free address stack. The index RAM is resizable so that data for a plurality of cryptographic algorithms may be stored dynamically.