A method for offloading a secure protocol connection, involving establishing the secure protocol connection between a host system and a remote peer, offloading the secure protocol connection to a network interface card (NIC) to obtain an offloaded secure protocol connection, determining whether a packet is associated with the offloaded secure protocol connection, and if the packet is associated with the offloaded secure protocol connection, identifying the offloaded secure protocol connection, performing cryptographic operations on the packet using at least one secret key to obtain a processed packet, and returning a status of the processed packet to the host system.