Icacl, which stands for integrity control access control list, is a term coined by Microsoft. It refers to their system for natively displaying, creating, modifying, and backing up ACLs (access control lists) for files and folders.

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and later versions of Windows include a program, icacls, a command-line utility for performing these functions. Icacls is also used to set integrity levels (representing “trustworthiness”) and ownership in Windows Vista.

ACL, Computer acronyms, Network terms, NTFS, Service Pack 2, Windows Server

Icacls ignores and destroys the protection attributes of protected ACLs. Be aware of this if you are working with protected ACLs in a Windows environment using NTFS.

  • See our icacls command page for examples and full syntax of this command.