A security system with a mechanism to identify types of information that need to be secured and another mechanism to specify how the types are to be secured. The system includes a sender having an application and a receiver having a security module and one or more datastores to store information related to types of information that need to be secured (e.g. "scopes"), how information is to be secured (e.g., "profiles"), and a mapping (e.g., "bindings") between the scopes and profiles. Scopes can be implemented by application developers. Profiles can be implemented by application deployers and/or administrators. The security module determines which scope is appropriate for the message, and then determines the profile that is mapped to the scope. The security module can then make an access control decision using the profile.