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Deploying Address Book Policies in an environment protected by Information Barriers v2

11 November 2025

Address Book Policies (ABPs) can be deployed in an environment protected by Information Barriers v2 to enable secure communication and collaboration within the organization—especially in scenarios where employees or managers work across, or are responsible for, multiple departments.

Important

You can manage all ABP features only in a hybrid environment.

The cmdlets required to manage address lists are not available in a cloud-only environment.

 

Contents

  • Prerequisites

  • ABP Configuration

 

Prerequisites

  1. Ensure that set Module Multi-Segment is enabled to switch into Information Barriers v2
  2. Deploy ABP after IB

 

When Information Barriers are enabled, the system creates the following objects automatically:

GlobalAddressList

Name: IBPolicyGAL_Empty

RecipientFilter: -not(ObjectClass -ne $null) 

AddressList

 Name: IBPolicyAL_Empty

 DisplayName: All Users

 RecipientFilter: -not(ObjectClass -ne $null) 

OfflineAddressBook

Name: IBPolicyOAB_Empty

Versions:  Version4

 AddressLists: {\IBPolicyGAL_Empty} 

Address Book Policy (ABP)

Name: Empty AddressBook Mailbox Policy

Finally, ensure that in Exchange Admin Center (https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/) all users have their Address book policy set to: Empty AddressBook Mailbox Policy

How to set manually

 

 

ABP configuration

Create a new Global Address List within organization based on Information Barrier segment name.

Create an Address List, Offline Address Book, and, if needed, a Room List. If not required, you can use the default settings.

If you don’t change the Information Barrier segments, this script only needs to run once.

For employees or managers who work across multiple departments, or are responsible for more than one area, you need to create a complex Global Address List. This list should include recipients from the user’s department, along with an Offline Address Book that contains the Address Lists relevant to the departments where the user works or has responsibilities.

This script should run daily to provide the additional option described above.

Next, create and assign an Address Book Policy (ABP) for all standard users. For employees or managers responsible for multiple departments, create and assign an ABP that uses the complex GAL and OAB.

This script should also run daily to ensure ABPs are correctly applied and updated for all users.

 

 

 

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