Many applications require protection of secret or sensitive information, from sensor nodes and embedded applications to large distributed systems. The confidentiality of data can be protected by encryption using symmetric-key ciphers, and the integrity of the data can be ensured by using a cryptographic hash function to calculate a "digital fingerprint." In this paper, we propose reconfigurable FPGA hardware components that enable rapid deployment of cryptographic and other algorithms. The novelty of our hardware components is in their general-purpose design which enables easy mappings of algorithms to allow customizations of data protection for different usage scenarios. Since we utilize only a small part of an FPGA chip, our design can be readily integrated with other processing needs of a mobile device, a sensor node or a System-on-Chip. Important block ciphers like the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) as well as advanced cryptographic hash algorithms like Whirlpool map well onto our general-purpose components. Our solution facilitates easy hardware implementation of customizable encryption and hashing solutions, with area and speed performance comparable to custom FPGA implementations targeted at a specific cipher or hash algorithm. We achieve the best efficiency in Mbps/slice for Whirlpool. Furthermore, the components that we have proposed can be used for many other applications - not just for implementing block ciphers and cryptographic hash functions.