Exchange admins: Is it time to rethink your email address policy?
Most Exchange Server administrators may not spend a lot of time thinking about email address
policies. In fact, once Exchange is up and running, you probably won't touch the policy again
unless a corporate merger or similar event forces you to change company email addresses. But the
email address policy may affect your organization's overall security more than you originally
thought.
Although more advanced authentication mechanisms are available, most users still authenticate by
using a traditional username and password combination. If a hacker can figure out a username, he
has one-half of the information needed to log in as a legitimate user.
The problem is that email addresses often have some correlation to usernames. For example, my
email address
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This was first published in July 2009
is
Brien@brienposey.com. It's easy to guess that my logon name is
Brien. Therefore, it's a good idea to change my email address to a different format than one
that includes my logon name.
Modifying a user's email address policy will change his email addresses. If your email address
policy was created using Exchange Server 2003, you'll have to use either System Manager to perform
the modification or you'll need to upgrade the policy using the Set-EmailAddressPolicy command.
Modifying your Exchange email address policy
You can modify your email address policy by opening the Exchange Management Console and
selecting the Hub Transport container from the Organization Configuration section. Next,
select the Email Address Policies tab, select your email address policy and click
Edit.
The email address policy is comprised of a single text string that dictates the format of the
email address. You can use Microsoft's pre-canned address or you can create a custom SMTP address.
If your goal is to improve security, I recommend creating a custom SMTP address, which can only be
done via the Exchange Management Shell.
To create a custom SMTP email address policy, create a text string that consists of hard-coded
text blocks and different variables. A list of the available variables are show in Table 1.
| Variable |
Function |
| %G |
First name |
| %I |
Middle initial |
| %S |
Last name |
| %D |
Display name |
| %M |
Exchange alias |
| %<x>S |
The first X letters of the user's last name. For example %2S would represent the first
two letters of the user's last name. |
| %<x>G |
The first X letters of the user's first name. For example, %3G would represent the first
three letters of the user's first name. |
Table 1. Available variables for creating a custom SMTP email address policy.
Although you can see which variables are available, you may still be a bit unclear on how to use
them. Here's an example:
First name: Brien
Middle initial: M
Last name: Posey
Display name: Brien Posey
Domain: Contoso.com
Table 2 shows what the email address looks like based on various email address policy
strings.
| String |
Resulting email address |
| %G.%S |
Brien.Posey@contoso.com |
| %1G%S |
BPosey@contoso.com |
| %G%I%S |
BrienMPosey@contoso.com |
| %G%1S |
BrienP@contoso.com |
Table 2. Samples of various email address policy strings.
About the author: Brien M. Posey, MCSE, is a five-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable
Professional award for his work with Exchange Server, Windows Server, Internet Information Services
(IIS), and File Systems and Storage. Brien has served as CIO for a nationwide chain of hospitals
and was once responsible for the Department of Information Management at Fort Knox. As a freelance
technical writer, Brien has written for Microsoft, TechTarget, CNET, ZDNet, MSD2D, Relevant
Technologies and other technology companies. You can visit Brien's personal website at www.brienposey.com.
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