Digital rights management (DRM) can be effectively implemented through use of an anchor point and binding records within a user's anchor point domain. Assigning security levels to various components within an anchor point based DRM system and evaluating them against a security criterion provides additional protection against authorized access of the digital content. The content provider may specify the security criterion (e.g., a security level threshold), and the ability to use the digital content is denied or granted based on the ability of components to satisfy this criterion. For example, the ability to use a digital property instance is granted to a content handler that satisfies the security criterion and denied to a content handle that does not satisfy the security criterion.