A method for providing hardware mandatory access control (MAC) may include coupling an input filter to a hardware core. The input filter may receive one or more labeled objects and may qualify the labeled objects based on a first label associated with each of the labeled objects. The input filter may strip the first label from each of the labeled objects to provide one or more input objects. The hardware core may receive the one or more input objects and may provide one or more output objects. An output filter may be coupled to the hardware core. The output filter may receive the one or more output objects and may associate to each of the one or more output objects a second label. Operations of the input filter and the output filter may be coordinated by a label manager.