1. An apparatus comprising: a plurality of secure hardware registers configured to receive instructions to perform a plurality of secure operations for manipulating one or more secret data objects; and one or more security assist hardware circuits configured to perform discrete operations using the one or more secret data objects, wherein each of the plurality of secure hardware registers corresponds to a different security assist hardware circuit, the discrete operations comprising at least one of data encryption, data decryption, signature calculation and checking, and random number generation.