A method and system for managing security material and security services, and for securely distributing them in a distributed database system where one or multiple distributed applications operate on distributed data. One database hosted by database server contains master version of the security data of databases hosted by database servers. The database hosted by database server has a global view of the security material for managing security of the other databases. A special database is responsible of providing security services to application database of a database server. The system and method control application programs access to data of a database in a database server, and also facilitates the security management issues of complex database topologies, such as multitier hierarchies or multi-master topologies.