Enable Forest-Wide Authentication over a Forest Trust

Applies To: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2

The forest-wide authentication setting permits unrestricted access by any users in the trusted forest to all available shared resources in any of the domains in the trusting forest. This is the default authentication setting for forest trusts, and it is representative of the way authentications were routed—without restriction—over Windows 2000 Server trusts. For more information about the forest-wide authentication setting, see Security Considerations for Trusts (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=111846).

You can use this procedure to enable forest-wide authentication over a forest trust.

Membership in Domain Admins or Enterprise Admins in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at Local and Domain Default Groups (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477).

To enable forest-wide authentication over a forest trust

  1. Open Active Directory Domains and Trusts.

  2. In the console tree, right-click the forest root domain, and then click Properties.

  3. On the Trusts tab, under either Domains trusted by this domain (outgoing trusts) or Domains that trust this domain (incoming trusts), click the forest trust that you want to administer, and then click Properties.

  4. On the Authentication tab, click Forest-wide authentication, and then click OK.

Note

Only the authentication settings for the outgoing trust are displayed when you click Properties and then click the Authentication tab in Active Directory Domains and Trusts. To view the correct authentication settings for the incoming side of a two-way, forest trust, connect to a domain controller in the trusted domain (the forest root domain in the other forest), and then use Active Directory Domains and Trusts to view the authentication settings for the outgoing side of the same trust.