This disclosure describes techniques of using a centralized rule database to control the abilities of software processes to perform actions with regard to resources provided by a computer. As described herein, each software process executing in a computer executes within a chamber and each resource provided by the computer is associated with a canonical name that uniquely identifies the resource. Furthermore, the computer stores a set of security rules in a centralized rule database. In addition, this disclosure describes techniques of enforcing the rules stored in the centralized rule database.