Section 4.5: Managing Users by Using Groups

An administrator can group a number of users together to manage user access to shared network resources. These groups are called user groups and can form the basis for assigning to users the required permissions and rights to access the network resources. When the administrator assigns permissions and rights to a group, those permissions are applied to all the members of the group. Users can be placed in multiple user groups and one user group can be placed in another user group. The latter is referred to as nesting. In a domain, user groups can be used to centralize user administration.

In a domain, Windows XP Professional supports different types of groups and scopes. In a Windows XP Professional domain, there are two types of user groups:

Security groups, which are used to perform security-related duties; and
Distribution groups, which are used by applications for non-security related functions.