Described embodiments provide a network processor that includes a security protocol processor for staged security processing of a packet having a security association (SA). An SA request module computes an address for the SA. The SA is fetched to a local memory. An SA prefetch control word (SPCW) is read from the SA in the local memory. The SPCW identifies one or more regions of the SA and the associated stages for the one or more regions. An SPCW parser generates one or more stage SPCWs (SSPCWs) from the SPCW. Each of the SSPCWs is stored in a corresponding SSPCW register. A prefetch module services each SSPCW register in accordance with a predefined algorithm. The prefetch module fetches a requested SA region and provides the requested SA region to a corresponding stage for the staged security processing of an associated portion of the packet.