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Securing Installation Images in Windows Deployment Services (WDS)

  • Article

You can control which domain-based groups (recommended) or user (not recommended) with access to your installation image (remember that some images might have specially licensed software). You can do this for an image group (affecting all contained images) or for a specific installation image. You can access this dialog box by editing the properties of the installation image, or by right-clicking on an image group and selecting Security.

By default, Authenticated Users have the following permissions on an installation image:

  • Read & Execute
  • Read
  • List Folder Contents

This means any domain-authenticated user can install those images on a computer that is authorized to use WDS. You can restrict access in either of the following ways:

  • Granting access to the desired group(s) by copying the previous permissions.
  • Removing access to Authenticated Users. Do not click Deny because this will prevent access for everyone.