The present invention provides a method, apparatus, and computer implemented instructions for executing cryptographic operations. Responsive to a request to perform a cryptographic operation, one (or more) of a software process and a hardware process is selected for performing the cryptographic operation based on a policy which process results with available resources to perform the cryptographic operation to form a selected process. The cryptographic operation is performed using the selected process. Necessary object conversions, which is transparent to the application, is carried out in order to convert objects to usable forms of the selected process(es).