Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Server Specialists

Groups - Secure Your Distribution Groups

On this Page

  • Introduction - Why Secure Your Distribution Groups?
  • Securing the Distribution Group

Introduction - Why Secure Your Distribution 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 should 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.

Securing the Distribution Group

  1. Open the Exchange Management Console and find the group you wish to secure. Right click on it and choose Properties.
  2. Click on the tab "Mail Flow Settings" then select Message Delivery Restrictions and choose Properties.
  3. You can then secure the settings as with Exchange 2003 by selecting a group and requiring the sender be authenticated. However in addition you can also set who messages are rejected from, which is different to Exchange 2003 where it was either accept list OR reject list.

Screenshot : All Staff with Display Name adjusted to include space and secured to allow only members of the group to send to it - Exchange 2007