Nowadays, many services and applications need to be secured. In this paper we present the design and the initial development of a new security-oriented open hardware and software platform easy to be integrated and capable of hiding significant complexity behind a set of simple high-level APIs. This SoC platform is called SEcube™ (Secure Environment cube). It is a single-chip design that embeds three main cores: a highly powerful processor, a Common Criteria certified smartcard, and a flexible FPGA. The SEcube™ platform provides several functional entry levels, ranging from the hardware to software APIs amenable to become service-ready in a near future. This way, developers who do not feel comfortable on security aspects can use the easy-to-use API abstraction layer and experience the Cube as a high-security black box. Conversely, security experts can avail of the open source character, and verify, change, or write from scratch the entire system, starting from the elementary low-level blocks.