This paper gives firstly an introduction about the consistency of an Access Control List (ACL). It uses triples or in other
words, in three dimensions and their corresponding decisions to describe the access control rules, i.e. ACL entries. We present
then and justify the mathematical definitions of an ACL and its related components and discuss its consistency, two theorems
about the consistency of the ACL. Thirdly the paper discusses verification of the consistency of the ACL and a new method
used to verify the consistency of the ACL derived from the theorems in use. The method obtained here is a theoretical approach.
In the conclusion, we point out that in a practical system, verification of the consistency of the ACL is necessary and the
method is an effective and efficient one, further measures should be taken and study should be continued to reduce the amount
of computation needed to examine the consistency of the ACL.
Keywords access control - consistency - information security
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.90104033.