What Is Access Control List (ACL)?

Let's face it. You want everyone to look at your files. That's why Access Control Lists (ACLs) are so important. They're great for ensuring only the right people see your stuff. If you want to keep nosey colleagues from reading your files, access control lists help protect your privacy. The ACL lists a system object's security information that defines access rights for users and groups. It aims to determine who can take what action on a specific file or folder. It applies to Microsoft Windows Server, Windows 7, and Windows 8 operating systems. It lists users and groups, determining which users can access a file or folder. If you have ever used permissions, you already know something about it. It has a resource-based security model designed to provide security that facilitates authorization of an application that accesses an individually secured resource. They are combined with other security mechanisms, such as authentication and encryption. In Windows NT, they're distributed as an abstraction layer over the older NTFS file system. File permissions are set with the command but read/write/modify permissions are assigned directly to the ACLs. Access Control List contains items known as Access Control Entities (ACE), which hold the security details of each "trustee" with system access. Security settings are internally stored in a data structure, which is a 32-bit value that represents the permission set used to operate a securable object. The object security details include generic rights (read, write and execute), object-specific rights (delete and synchronization, etc.), System ACL (SACL) access rights and Directory Services access rights (specific for directory service objects). The ACL lists all the people you don't want to let in the room. Now that the jokes are over, an ACL is a list of ACEs, each representing an object (or resource), its security details, and who has access to it.