A facility for setting and revoking policies is provided. The facility receives a request from a controlling process a request to set a policy on a controlled process, and determines whether the controlling process has privilege to set the policy on the controlled process. If the facility determines that the controlling process has privilege to set the policy on the controlled process, the facility sets the policy on the controlled process, which causes the policy to be applied to the controlled process to determine whether the controlled process has authorization to access one or more resources.