1. A computer-executable method of enforcing security within a supervisory process control and manufacturing information system comprising: defining a set of user roles, stored on one or more memory devices, corresponding to different types of users within the system; defining a set of security groups, stored on one or more memory devices, comprising a set of security permissions with regard to a set of objects, said objects including a set of primitives and a set of attributes; assigning a set of user accounts, stored on one or more memory devices, to at least one of the defined roles thereby indirectly defining access rights with regard to the set of objects having restricted access within the system; assigning the security permissions at an object attribute level to permit writing to the attributes based on the defined access rights; and enforcing the security permissions to determine access to the set of objects; wherein the computer-executable method is executed within a layered architecture comprising application objects that model entities within a process control system, engine objects that host execution of the applications in a runtime environment, and platform objects corresponding to a physical computer system component for executing the engine objects and associated application objects and wherein the platform objects host at least one of the engine objects.