A system and method to manage device access in a software partition are provided. The illustrative embodiments provide a mechanism for exporting resources/devices from an administrator partition to a software partition in its purview. A trusted device list data structure is provided that identifies which devices are permitted to be exported into a software partition from an administrative partition. This trusted device list data structure also identifies which of the devices in the list of devices should be exported by default when exporting devices to a software partition, i.e. if no overrides are specified. In addition, a user-specifiable mechanism to override the entries in the trusted device list data structure is provided. For security purposes, this mechanism may not be used to export devices not listed in the trusted device list data structure. The mechanism may also be used to prevent the exporting of devices which are exported by default.