A method, apparatus and machine readable medium are described for managing entitlements on a computing device. For example, one embodiment of a method comprises: loading a first application into a system memory of a computing device; for each library value/symbol pair referenced by the first application, determining whether the first application has a correct entitlement to be linked with the library value/symbol pair; wherein if the application does not have the correct entitlement associated with the library value/symbol pair, then denying linking to the library value/symbol pair and/or linking the application to an alternate library value/symbol pair which does not have the entitlement associated therewith; and if the application has the correct entitlement associated with the library value/symbol pair, then linking the application to the library value/symbol pair with the entitlement in the system memory.