What does secured object mean?

I need to implement my custom SecurityMetadataSource (docs).

So, I'm reading Spring Security and have some misunderstanding about secured object meaning using there . the documentation provides the following:

Collection<ConfigAttribute> getAttributes(Object object)
                                          throws IllegalArgumentException

Accesses the ConfigAttributes that apply to a given secure object.

and doesn't say anything about what the secure object mean. Couldn't you point me out to the definition of this term, if any in the documentation? To me, it sounds too broad and not clear what particular object could be a secure object. For instance, if we created an object like Object o = new Object() could it be the secure object?