A mechanism is provided for administering and maintaining access control lists for a filesystem in a heterogeneous network environment. A filesystem includes an access mechanism for a native filesystem type. Files, directory structures, metadata, etc. are stored using the native access mechanism. Access control lists may also be stored for the native filesystem type using the native access mechanism. The filesystem also includes access mechanisms for one or more additional filesystem types. Access control lists may be stored for the additional filesystem types, as needed. Thus, any given filesystem object may have associated therewith two or more access control lists.