Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Server Specialists

Groups - Secure Your Distribution Groups

Why Secure Your Groups?

Your distribution lists can be abused and should be secured. Spammers like to find the addresses of a wide distribution group as it makes their life much easier.

In many companies, there will be a group equivalent to "All Users". This group needs to be secured, but can also provide security for other groups that you may have. 

By securing the group so that only members of "All Users" can send to a message to the group stops anyone from outside from using the same list. This could be a spammer or a disgruntled ex-employee or even a current employee wanting to cause problems by sending a message in from a Hotmail account.

By using a group to secure the list means that when a staff member leaves, all you need to do is remove their group membership, without having to worry about other permissions.

  1. ADUC on the Exchange Server, right click on the group and choose Properties.
  2. Click on the tab "Exchange General"
  3. Adjust "Accept Messages" to "Only From:" and select the required list. For aditional security you can also set the "From authenticated users only" option as well.

Screenshot : All Staff with Display Name adjusted to include space and secured to allow only members of the group to send to it - Exchange 2003