To protect your organization's private information, you should
verify the identity of newsgroup users. You can secure access to
newsgroups by setting authentication options on the virtual server
or by setting permissions on Windows 2000 Server accounts and
directories.
NNTP servers support the following security options:
Anonymous access. This option allows anyone to access a
newsgroup without providing a user name or password. If you select
this option you must specify an anonymous account, which specifies
how the user is identified and defines access privileges. This is
the least secure security option because it allows any user outside
of your company to access data on the virtual server. If you use
anonymous access, you can control access by setting restricted
permissions on the anonymous account.
Basic authentication. This option requires the user to
provide a user name and a password, which are sent as clear text
across the network. Clear text does not encrypt user names and
passwords. You can make this option more secure by also using
integrated Windows authentication or SSL-enabled client
authentication to encrypt user names and passwords.
Integrated Windows authentication. This security option
requires users to have valid Windows 2000 user account names and
passwords to access newsgroups. Instead of prompting users for
their account names and passwords when they log on to an NNTP
virtual server, users' Windows logon credentials are automatically
relayed to the server. The Windows credentials are the user names
and passwords that users supply when logging on to Windows.
Relaying Windows credentials allows the server to authenticate
users without requesting information from them or transmitting
unencrypted information across the network.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This option uses
certificates to validate the identity of clients and servers. When
a server certificate is installed and an SSL-enabled client
connects, the entire session is encrypted. This includes user
names, passwords, and newsgroup data.
You can also control access to newsgroups by setting Windows
2000 Server permissions for the directories that contain the
newsgroups. You can set permissions for an individual directory or
for a set of directories. For specific instructions, see Setting
Access Permissions for a Directory or File in the IIS online
documentation.