An apparatus and method for protecting content in a graphics processor. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: encode/decode circuitry to decode protected audio and/or video content to generate decoded audio and/or video content; a graphics cache of a graphics processing unit (GPU) to store the decoded audio and/or video content; first protection circuitry to set a protection attribute for each cache line containing the decoded audio and/or video data in the graphics cache; a cache coherency controller to generate a coherent read request to the graphics cache; second protection circuitry to read the protection attribute to determine whether the cache line identified in the read request is protected, wherein if it is protected, the second protection circuitry to refrain from including at least some of the data from the cache line in a response.