Hi, 

I have 4 departments in my company, each department has a group that contains all users in that department. we want to secure communications as follows: 
- Each user can only communicate with users who are in the same group at lync 

for example, users who work in the "XXX" department are members of the group named "XXX". I need the user  can communicate with members of this group but not with members of another group named for example "ZZZ".

is it possible? 

if so, how? 

thank you

• Edited by strabelsi Friday, March 07, 2014 6:03 PM

It would only be possible using some kind of customization (either MSPL or SDK) although for what you want I suspect the Lync Server SDK will be the most appropriate. 

See this for an outline http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2012/07/controlling-who-has-what-access-to-who.html

I believe there is an example on ethical firewalling on MSDN for the Lync SDK, you could just extend it to get groups from either AD or SQL and then block traffic if users don't match.

I forgot to mention there also 3rd party applications that achieve this:

http://www.multiux.com/products/multiux-ethical-wall-for-lync.html

Could you please explain me? :(

If you choose to build your own application using the Lync SDK, you can basically intercept messages whilst in transit and block them based on group membership (which would be either contained in a database you build or through a connection with AD) - This is probably the most complicated/hardest method, but if you have .NET developers on staff it might be an option.

The other way is to use something like the 3rd party tool (MultiUx Ethical Wall for Lync) I put it the link above, which gives you that functionality plus a lot more. It will most likely work in the same manner (by filtering traffic) but it's already built and available and you won't have to build anything, just install and configure it.

Unfortunately what you want cannot be done 'out of the box' with Lync and it requires something additional. 

MultiUx Ethical Wall for Lync is not free :((((((((