Evaluation of effective access permissions in identity and access management (IAM) systems

Disclosed herein are system, method, and computer program product embodiments for generating a list of deny policy statements associated with an allow policy statement with respect to the effective access permissions for a principal in an identity and access management system. The operations can include identifying a first policy statement that specifies members of a first identity set including the principal are allowed to access a first system resource set. The operations further include identifying a second policy statement specifying that members of a second identity set are denied access to a second system resource set. Moreover, the operations include determining that the second policy statement overlaps with the first policy statement with respect to the effective access permissions for the principal, and placing the second policy statement into the list of deny policy statements associated with an allow policy statement.