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HOWTO: Add the required Hybrid Identity URLs to the Trusted Sites list of Internet Explorer and Edge

Most Microsoft-based Hybrid Identity implementations use Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) Servers, Web Application Proxies and Azure AD Connect installations. In this series, labeled Hardening Hybrid Identity , we’re looking at hardening these implementations, using recommended practices.

In this part of the series, we’ll look at the required Hybrid Identity URLs that you want to add to the Trusted Sites list in Internet Explorer.

Note: This is the second part for adding Microsoft Cloud URLs to Internet Explorer’s zone. In this part we look at the Trusted Sites zone. In the previous part we looked at the Local Intranet zone .

Note: Adding URLs to the Trusted Sites zone for Internet Explorer, also applies to Microsoft Edge.

Why look at the Trusted Sites?

Hybrid Identity enables functionality for people using on-premises user accounts, leveraging Azure Active Directory as an additional identity platform. By default, Azure AD is the identity platform for Microsoft Cloud services, like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Azure.

By adding the URLs for these services to the Trusted Sites list, we enable a seamless user experience without browser prompts or hick-ups to these services.

Internet Explorer offers built-in zones. Per zone, Internet Explorer is allowed specific functionality. Restricted Sites is the most restricted zone and Internet Explorer deploys the maximum safeguards and fewer secure features (like Windows Integrated Authentication) are enabled.

The Trusted Sites zone, by default, offers a medium level of security.

Possible negative impact (What could go wrong?)

Internet Explorer’s zones are defined with specific default settings to lower the security features for websites added to these zones.

When you use a Group Policy object to add websites that don’t need the functionality of the Trusted Sites zone to the zone, the systems in scope for the Group Policy object are opened up to these websites. This may result in unwanted behavior of the browser such as browser hijacks, identity theft and remote code executions, for example when you mistype the URLs or when DNS is compromised.

While this does not represent a clear and immediate danger, it is a situation to avoid.

Getting ready

The best way to manage Internet Explorer zones is to use Group Policy.

To create a Group Policy object, manage settings for the Group Policy object and link it to an Organizational Unit, Active Directory site and/or Active Directory domain, log into a system with the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) installed with an account that is either:

A member of the Domain Admins group, or;
The current owner of the Group Policy Object, and have the Link GPOs permission on the Organizational Unit(s), Site(s) and/or Domain(s) where the Group Policy Object is to be linked, or;
Delegated the Edit Settings or Edit settings, delete and modify security permission on the GPO, and have the Link GPOs permission on the Organizational Unit(s), Site(s) and/or Domain(s) where the Group Policy Object is to be linked.

The URLs to add

You’ll want to add the following URLs to the Trusted Sites zone, depending on the way you’ve setup your Hybrid Identity implementation:

*.microsoft.com

*.microsoftonline.com, *.windows.net, ajax.aspnetcdn.com, microsoft.com, microsoftline.com, microsoftonline-p.net, onmicrosoft.com.

The above URLs are used in Hybrid Identity environments. While they overlap with some of the URLs for the Local Intranet Zone, these URLs allow side services to work properly, too.

*.msappproxy.net

Web applications that you integrate with Azure Active Directory through the Azure AD Application Proxy are published using https://*.msappproxy.net URLs. Add the above wildcard URL to the Trusted Sites list, when you’ve deployed or are planning to deploy Azure AD App Proxy. If you use vanity names for Azure AD App Proxied applications, add these to the Trusted Sites list, as well.

Other Office 365 services

Most Hybrid Identity implementations are used to allow access to Office 365 only. Last year, 65% of Hybrid Identity implementations are used to unlock access to one or more Office 365 services, like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Teams, only. This blogpost focuses on the Hybrid Identity URLs, but you might want to add more Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges to the Trusted Sites list as you deploy, roll out and use Office 365 services. You can use this (mostly outdated) Windows PowerShell script to perform that action , if you need.

How to add the URLs to the Trusted Sites zone

To add the URLs to the Trusted Sites zone, perform these steps:

Log into a system with the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) installed.
Open the Group Policy Management Console ( gpmc.msc )
In the left pane, navigate to the Group Policy objects node.
Locate the Group Policy Object that you want to use and select it, or right-click the Group Policy Objects node and select New from the menu.
Right-click the Group Policy object and select Edit… from the menu. The Group Policy Management Editor window appears.
In the main pane of the Group Policy Management Editor window, expand the Computer Configuration node, then Policies , Administrative Templates , Windows Components , Internet Explorer , Internet Control Panel and then the Security Page node.

In the main pane, double-click the Sites to Zone Assignment List setting.
Enable the Group Policy setting by selecting the Enabled option in the top pane.
Click the Show… button in the left pane. The Show Contents window appears.
Add the above URLs to the Trusted Sites zone by entering the URL in the Value name column and the number 2 in the Value column for each of the URLs.
Click OK when done.
Close the Group Policy Editor window.
In the left navigation pane of the Group Policy Management Console, navigate to the Organization Unit (OU) where you want to link the Group Policy object.
Right-click the OU and select Link an existing GPO… from the menu.
In the Select GPO window, select the GPO.
Click OK to link the GPO.

Repeat the last three steps to link the GPO to all OUs that require it. Take Block Inheritance into account for OUs by linking the GPO specifically to include all people in scope.

To enable functionality in a Hybrid Identity implementation, we need to open up the web browser to allow functionality for specific web addresses. By enabling the right URLs we minimize our efforts in enabling the functionality and also minimize the negative effect on browser security.

There is no need to add all the URLs to specific Internet Explorer zones, when you don’t need to functionality. However, do not forget to add the specific URLs when you enable specific functionality like the Azure AD Application Proxy and remove specific URLs when you move away from specific functionality.

2 Responses to HOWTO: Add the required Hybrid Identity URLs to the Trusted Sites list of Internet Explorer and Edge

Great Post! Thank you so much for teaching us on how to add hybrid identity urls to the trusted list of sites on browsers like internet explorer and Microsoft edge.

I want to block all websites on edge and only give access to 2 sites but using group policy can someone help on this?

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Managing Internet Explorer Trusted Sites with Group Policy

Internet Explorer Maintenance is dead. We all have our regrets, missed chances, and memories. But we have to move on. Depending on your love for power, you have two options. You can take the totalitarian route (known as Administrative Templates) or the benevolent method (known as Group Policy Preferences). Here are the two ways that you can configure Internet Explorer Trusted Sites with Group Policy.

Configuring IE Trusted Sites with Administrative Templates

Site to Zone Mapping allows you to configure trusted sites with Group Policy Administrative Templates. This setting can be found at:

Computer Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Internet Explorer / Internet Control Panel/Security Page/Site to Zone Assignment List
User Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Internet Explorer / Internet Control Panel/Security Page/Site to Zone Assignment List

When possible, use the computer configuration option as it will not impact user logons. When you enable the setting, you will be prompted for a value name (the website) and a value (the zone list). Here are the possible values and the zone that they correspond to:

1 = Intranet/Local Zone
2 = Trusted Sites
3 = Internet/Public Zone
4 = Restricted Sites

Internet Explorer Trusted Sites with Group Policy

The screenshot above shows one trusted site and one restricted site. There is a potential downside to managing trusted sites with Administrative Templates. You will not be able to edit the trusted sites list within Internet Explorer. If you have more than four items listed, you won’t be able to see the entire list in the IE Trusted Sites window. If you view the site properties (Alt – File – Properties), you can check a specific site’s zone though. Remember this trick as it will help you when troubleshooting! You can view the entire list in the Registry by navigating to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains. If you are an administrator, you can edit/add/remote items from this list for testing. Just be sure to run a GPUpdate /force to undo your changes.

Bonus Points : Leave a comment below explaining why a GPUpdate /force is required to undo your changes. Super Bonus Points if you answer in a haiku.

Configuring IE Trusted Sites with Group Policy Preferences Registry

You would think that Group Policy Preferences Internet Settings could set trusted sites. Unfortunately, that setting is greyed out.

You can still configure IE site mappings with Group Policy Registry Preferences though.* The benefit of this is that your users can edit the zone lists and view all of the added sites. To set this up, create a new user side registry preference. This trick will not work under computer configuration. Enter in the following details:

Keypath: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\WEBSITENAME
Value Name: http
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value Data: 2

Here is an example showing DeployHappiness being set as a trusted site with registry preferences:

If your site isn’t being placed in the Trusted Sites list, add it manually and then navigate to the registry location above. Ensure that the manual addition exactly matches your registry preference. You will also need to ensure that no Administrative Template Site to Zone settings are applied. If they are, they will wipe out your preference settings. Remember that Policies always win!

You can search your domain for site to zone settings by using this Group Policy Search script. Alan Burchill taught me this trick.

To see additional ways to configure site to zone mappings, read this very in depth example guide.

24 thoughts on “ Managing Internet Explorer Trusted Sites with Group Policy ”

I hope to replace our Site to Zone list to allow our users to enter their own in but I am not sure how to enter our entries that don’t specify a specific protocal such as http or https. So can someone tell me how I would create an entry for this:

*://*.sharepoint.com

and what about something like this – how would this be entered?

https://192.192.192.192 .:9443 (example only)

As for your first question, this info should help: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/326140-add-trusted-sites-via-gpo-but-still-allow-users-to-add-trusted-sites?page=1#entry-2849140

As for the second question, I don’t know of a way to handle ports. In reference to your example, a link like that would be entered like this: *://192.192.192.192

This is excellent – I have used the GP preferences to add trused sites without locking users out of the setting if they need to add a site. But what about this – a program in the startup group – it is a shortcut to a file on a server – a member server of the local domain – domain.local. I want to prevent this program from prompting end-users to run it, and make sure it will run without prompting. Can this be accomplished with a GP preference as well? If so, do I need to add it to trusted sites, or to the local intranet zone or local machine zone? It would seem to be a local intranet or local machine zone I am working with here. I am not sure how to add it – whether I just need to add the local domain, or the computer name FQDN, or the path to the shared folder and the file. thanks!

This sounds like two different problems: 1. How do I get an app to run without prompting? 2. How do I make it run on startup with group policy?

The latter is easy, create it as a scheduled task that runs on startup. The former depends on what type of script it is. If it’s a vbscript then run it with cscript /b “name.vbs”.

With the old approach we had a file under trusted sites to allow the file to run. It has stopped working under 2012. Could I use this with a file? The old setting was:

file:\\Domain.com\netlogon\AsmallExe.exe

See this article on what you can configure with trusted sites: http://evilgpo.blogspot.com/2016/03/internet-explorer-site-to-zone.html

Just the ticket. Thanks a lot.

I have double-checked that the site to zone assignment policy is not configured, both under user and computer settings. We used group policy preferences because we do not want to lock down the trusted sites – only to push out the sites we want to be trusted. But for some absurd reason, the trusted sites are locked down and greyed out half the time – one day I will look and the sites are not dimmed out and will let me add or remove them. Then the next day they will be greyed out again. It is amazingly ridiculous. I am the only admin; no one else knows how to mess with the settings even if they had the admin credentials. So I have no clue why it keeps reverting back to the wrong settings. I thing our active directory needs to have dcdiag run on it a few times. Any ideas will be sincerely appreciated.

If it is locked down, it is a GP policy that is doing it (the site to zone assignment one) or a registry key that is enabling that site to zone assignment.

When you see one that does it, run a GPResult /h report.htm /f and look through that report.htm. You will see any GP settings that would block it then.

A reply to my own post – the problem was corrupted group policy on the Windows 7 computers – some of the computers were working fine. The ones that were not working, we had to delete the corrupt policy (it was preventing the updated policy settings from being applied). It was in the path C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Group Policy\History\{policy GUID}. After deleting the corrupt policy and rebooting, it fixed the problem!

Thanks for the update Sam!

You’re welcome! I am still having some issues with the trusted sites being greyed out in IE, even though I made certain not to use site to zone assignment in the policy, and only used GP preferences to add registry items for the sites in the trusted zone. Do you know what registry key I need to be looking for, that might be causing this issue?

Many thanks! Sam S.

Are you making sure that you’re applying it under HKCU, and not under HKLM? If you configure it under HKCU, users will still have the ability to add their own entries. But if you configure it under HKLM, the option to add entries will be greyed out.

Yes, I definitely deployed the preferences under the Users GP Preferences and not computer policy/preferences. However, there are some policy settings that I set in both computer and user settings in the GPO. None of these are site to zone assignments though. These settings are for all the security settings within the zones, like, download signed activeX controls – enable, download unsigned activeX controls, Prompt… etc.. – these settings are set in the computer policy and the user policy which is probably what is wrong. I should probably just disable the computer policies in the GPO. I will try that and see if it helps. Why are all these settings available in the computer side and the user side both? Is there a reason someone would set these settings in one policy over the other?

A computer side policy is available for every user that logs in already. These are generally faster to apply and are my preferred way to configure something. However, times like this are when a user side policy would be the best route for you. Remove the computer side settings and try John’s suggestions. Let us know what you find out.

Sam, another thing you can try is to access the GPO from a Windows 7 workstation running IE 9 (and make sure that there are no current Internet Explorer policies being applied to the workstation; put it in an OU that is blocking inheritance if you have to), then drill down to “User Config\Policies\Windows Settings\Internet Explorer Maintenance\Security\Security Zones and Content Ratings”. Double-click on “Security Zones and Content Ratings”, then choose “Import…” under “Security Zones and Privacy’, click “Continue” when prompted, then click “Modify Settings, then “Trusted Sites”, then the “Sites” button. You can then make whatever changes you want (add a site, remove a site, remove the check from the https box, etc). This should give you the freedom you’re looking for :).

i`ve add multiple Sites to the Site to Zone assigment list (Trusted Sites). After a new logon, i`ve check my settings, start IE11, visit the site i`ve add to the list, press Alt – File – Properties and check the Zone. Some of the sites are correct, shown in the trusted site zone, some of them not, they are in an unkown zone (mixed). I want to check the registry path Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains but this key is empty, for HKLM and HKCU. What`s wrong?

Thanks and Regards Patrick

Are you deploying the trusted sites with Policies or registry preferences?

> comment below explaining why GPUpdate /force is required to undo your changes.

For Group Policy to apply efficiently changes trigger it.

Exceptions apply. GPUPDate force is one. Security too.

Less obtusely said: “Group Policy will normally only reprocess client side extensions that have at least one policy element that changed. The exceptions to this are Security Option settings which reapply every ~16 hours on most machines and every 5 minutes on Domain Controllers. The other exceptions are when you run a gpupdate /force, and any CSEs you configure to auto-reapply. You can view this decision tree by enabling UserEnv logging as described in http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc775423%28v=ws.10%29.aspx ” … But not as haiku.

Hi, Is it possible to select the users you want that this GPO applies? It is because I need to add a web to trusted sites, but only to two users. Any idea?

You would need to configure these settings under user configuration. Then change the scope of the GPO from authenticated users to a group containing those two users.

With regards to deploying trusted sites via GPO, while allowing users to add their own entries, see if this post helps: http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/post/2849140

I’m finding that when I deploy Trusted Sites using GPP and the registry, users aren’t able to add entries themselves (it allows them to add to the list, but the entries don’t stick and are gone as soon as you reopen the dialog). Any ideas?

You sir, have a good last name! 🙂

Do you have any delete preferences configured to that registry key? If you manually browse to that key, do you see what the user added?

Securing zone levels in Internet Explorer

Managing and configuring Internet Explorer can be complicated. This is especially true when users meddle with the numerous settings it houses. Users may even unknowingly enable the execution of malicious codes. This highlights the importance of securing Internet Explorer.

In this blog, we’ll talk about restricting users from changing security settings, setting trusted sites, preventing them from changing security zone policies, adding or deleting sites from security zones, and removing the Security tab altogether to ensure that users have a secure environment when using their browser.

Restricting users from changing security settings

A security zone is a list of websites at the same security level. These zones can be thought of as invisible boundaries that prevent certain web-based applications from performing unauthorized actions. These zones easily provide the appropriate level of security for the various types of web content that users are likely to encounter. Usually, sites are added or removed from a zone depending on the functionality available to users on that particular site.

To set trusted sites via GPO

Open the Group Policy Management Editor .
Go to User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page .
Select the Site to Zone Assignment List .
Select Enabled and click Show to edit the list. Refer to Figure 1 below. The zone values are as follows: 1 — intranet, 2 — trusted sites, 3 — internet zone, 4 — restricted sites.
Click Apply and OK .

Figure 1. Assigning sites to the Trusted Sites zone.

Figure 2. Enabling the Site to Zone Assignment List policy.

By enabling this policy setting, you can manage a list of sites that you want to associate with a particular security zone. See Figure 2.

Restricting users from changing security zone policies

Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer .
Double-click Security Zones: Do not allow users to change policies .
Select Enabled .

This prevents users from changing the security zone settings set by the administrator. Once enabled, this policy disables the Custom Level button and the security-level slider on the Security tab in the Internet Options dialog box. See Figure 3.

Restricting users from adding/deleting sites from security zones

Double-click Security Zones: Do not allow users to add/delete sites .

This disables the site management settings for security zones, and prevents users from changing site management settings for security zones established by the administrator. Users won’t be able to add or remove websites from the Trusted Sites and Restricted Sites zones or alter settings for the Local Intranet zone. See Figure 3.

Figure 3. Enabling Security Zones: Do not allow users to change policies and Security Zones: Do not allow users to add/delete sites .

Removing the Security tab

The Security tab in Internet Explorer’s options controls access to websites by applying security settings to various download and browsing options, including defining security levels for respective security zones. By removing this tab, users will no longer be able to see or change the settings established by the administrator.

Go to User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel .
Double-click Disable the Security page .

Figure 4. Enabling the Disable the Security page policy. Enabling this policy prevents users from seeing and changing settings for security zones such as scripting, downloads, and user authentication. See Figure 4.

There’s no denying the importance of securing Internet Explorer for any enterprise. By setting security levels, restricting users from changing security zone policies, preventing them from adding or deleting sites from security zones, and removing the Security tab, users will not be able to change any security settings in Microsoft Internet Explorer that have been established by the administrator. This helps you gain more control over Internet Explorer’s settings in your environment.

Derek Melber

Cancel reply.

Is there a way to enable Site to Zone assignment list and still let the user enter their own sites to the trusted list?

Hi Joe. You need to disable the below setting to achieve the requirement.

Securing zone levels in Internet Explorer

Note: Even if the policy is not configured, users can add their own sites. Only when the policy is enabled, users can’t add their own sites to trusted sites.

Thanks a lot.

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Site to zone assignment list.

This policy setting allows you to manage a list of sites that you want to associate with a particular security zone. These zone numbers have associated security settings that apply to all of the sites in the zone.Internet Explorer has 4 security zones numbered 1-4 and these are used by this policy setting to associate sites to zones. They are: (1) Intranet zone (2) Trusted Sites zone (3) Internet zone and (4) Restricted Sites zone. Security settings can be set for each of these zones through other policy settings and their default settings are: Trusted Sites zone (Low template) Intranet zone (Medium-Low template) Internet zone (Medium template) and Restricted Sites zone (High template). (The Local Machine zone and its locked down equivalent have special security settings that protect your local computer.)If you enable this policy setting you can enter a list of sites and their related zone numbers. The association of a site with a zone will ensure that the security settings for the specified zone are applied to the site. For each entry that you add to the list enter the following information:Valuename – A host for an intranet site or a fully qualified domain name for other sites. The valuename may also include a specific protocol. For example if you enter http://www.contoso.com as the valuename other protocols are not affected. If you enter just www.contoso.com then all protocols are affected for that site including http https ftp and so on. The site may also be expressed as an IP address (e.g. 127.0.0.1) or range (e.g. 127.0.0.1-10). To avoid creating conflicting policies do not include additional characters after the domain such as trailing slashes or URL path. For example policy settings for www.contoso.com and www.contoso.com/mail would be treated as the same policy setting by Internet Explorer and would therefore be in conflict.Value - A number indicating the zone with which this site should be associated for security settings. The Internet Explorer zones described above are 1-4.If you disable or do not configure this policy users may choose their own site-to-zone assignments.

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Scope: , supported on: , registry settings: , filename: , related content.

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Adding Trusted Site to Group Policy in Windows 10

By Sophia | Last Updated January 03, 2024

In some cases, such as enterprise, have to add trusted site to group policy manually before visiting the website. Today, we'll show you how to solve this issue. Although you are new to use group policy, worry not, this tutorial is easy for you to understand.

Note: Windows 10 Home edition doesn't support group policy.

How to Add Trusted Site to Group Policy Windows 10

Step 1: Press Windows + R key combination to invoke Run dialog. Input gpedit.msc to the box and click on OK .

Step 2: In the left pane, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security page . Double-click on Site to Zone Assignment List in the right pane.

Step 3: In the Site to Zone Assignment List window, select Enabled then tap on Show button under Options .

Step 4: In the column under Value name , input the website. Then Type 2 in the box next to it.

Tips: Internet Explorer includes four safe zones, respectively, one to four. To add trusted site to group policy, we have to select number 2.

1: Intranet zone

2: Trusted Sites zone

3: Internet zone

4: Restricted Sites zone

Step 5: Go back to Site to Zone Assignment List window, tap on Apply then OK .

Step 6: When you finished the steps above, go to the desktop and check whether added successfully or not. Click on Search box then input Internet Explorer . Hit Enter , it will be opened at once.

Step 7: Click the gear icon in the top-right corner then select Internet options .

Step 8: Click on Security tab, tap on Trusted sites and click on Sites button.

Step 9: In the Trusted sites dialog, you will see the trusted site that added to group policy.

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Deploy a set of trusted sites overriding users’ ability to add trusted sites themselves. To acheive this, an Intune configuration profile Trusted site zone assignment can be deployed to devices/users group as required.

Hit the Create button and Select New policy

From the Create a profile menu, select Windows 10 and later for Platform , Templates for Profile type. Select Administrative templates and click Create .

Give the profile desired name and click Next .

In Configurations settings, select Computer Configuration and search for keyword “ Site to Zone “, Site to Zone Assignment List setting will be listed under search results. Go ahead click on it to Select it.

Once selected, a Site to Zone Assignment List page will appear on right side explaining different zones and values required for these zone for setup. Since this profile is being used for trusted sites, we will use the Value “2” . Go ahead and select Enabled button and start entering the trusted sites as required. please ensure to set each value to “2” . See example below:

Once done adding the list of sites, click OK to close it and Hit Next on Configuration settings page.

Add Scope tags if needed.

Under Assignments , Click Add groups to target the policy deployment to specific group of devices/users. You can also select Add all users / All all devices .

Hit Next . Then Hit Review + Save button to save.

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Adding Sites to Internet Security Zones Using Group Policy

Sometimes it is useful to leverage the power of Group Policy in Active Directory to add sites to certain security zones in Internet Explorer. This can save the network admin the trouble of managing the security zone lists for each computer (or user) separately. In the following example, each user on the network needs to have a specific site added to the Trusted Sites list.

This tutorial assumes that group policy is in good working order on the domain and that all client users and computers can access the directory.

Open the Group Policy Management MMC console.
Right-click the organization unit (OU) that the policy should apply to, taking special care to consider whether the policy should apply to computers or users on this particular network.
Select “Create and Link a GPO Here…” to create a new group policy object.
In the “New GPO” window, enter a good, descriptive name for this new policy and click “OK”. (ex. “Trusted Sites Zone – Users” or something even more descriptive)
Locate the newly created GPO in the left-side navigation pane, right-click it and select “Edit…”
Expand “Administrative Templates” under either “Computer Configuration” or “User Configuration” depending on which type of OU the new policy was linked to in step 2.
The path to the settings that this example will be using is: Administrative Templates -- Windows Components -- Internet Explorer -- Internet Control Panel -- Security Page
In the right-hand pane, double-click “Site to Zone Assignment List”.
Enable the policy and click the “Show…” button next to “Enter the zone assignments here.” This will pop up the “Show Contents” window.
Click the “Add…” button. This will pop up the “Add Item” window.
In the first box, labeled “Enter the name of the item to be added:”, enter the URL to the site. (ex. https://secure.ourimportantwebapp.com) . Keep in mind that wildcards can be used. (ex. https://*.ourimportantdomain.com) . Leave off any trailing slashes or sub-folders unless that type of specific control is called for.
1 – Intranet Zone
2 – Trusted Sites Zone
3 – Internet Zone
4 – Restricted Sites Zone
Once the zone assignment has been entered, click “OK”. This will once again show the “Show Contents” window and the new entry should be present.
Click “OK” and “OK” again to get back to the Group Policy Management Console.

The new policy will take effect at the next group policy refresh interval, which is usually 15 minutes. To test immediately, run a gpupdate /force on a user/computer that falls into the scope of the new policy and go to “Tools -> Internet Options -> Security -> Trusted Sites -> Sites”. The site(s) added should be in the list. If the sites do not show up, check the event logs for any group policy processing errors.

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Juicer breville says:.

November 26, 2012 at 12:11 am (UTC -5)

Hurrah, that’s what I was looking for, what a information! existing here at this web site, thanks admin of this web page.

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Assign DFS share to intranet zone via GPO?

This seems like it shouldn't be hard, but I haven't had any luck with either guessing or searching. I'll admit I'm no Windows guru, so forgive me if the answer should be obvious.

I'm trying to get Windows to stop giving me security warnings when I open files or links from a DFS share. I already have a GPO in place which does this for a couple of other network shares:

Here, I've added host1.mydomain.org and host2.mydomain.org to zone 1 (intranet), and the network shares from these hosts are correctly treated as trusted intranet sites.

However, I now want to add \\mydomain.org\shares to the intranet zone as well. Adding it just like that appears not to work (and on my client machine it appears in the list as file://*.mydomain.org ). Other things I've tried include *.mydomain.org and explicitly listing the hosts where the DFS shares originate.

"Turn on automatic detection of the intranet" is also enabled, although I've never been clear on how that actually works.

Servers and DCs are 2008 R2 and clients are (mostly) 7 Pro.

Edit: The next day, it appears that the listing of mydomain.org is in fact having the desired effect. I hadn't logged out and back in during testing; I just did a gpupdate /force and confirmed that the GPO settings appeared in the Internet Options dialog. Is this a bug or just another arcane Windows thing that I don't quite understand?

group-policy

For those finding this via a search: run gpedit.msc to edit the policy nicely enumerated above, then gpupdate /force – Stan May 12, 2016 at 22:48

2 Answers 2

When refreshing group policy it is usually necessary to log out and for some settings a restart (sometimes 2!) is necessary. I wouldn't call it arcane but it won't be obvious if you haven't documentation regarding group policy processing.

1 I understand that, but when I saw that the GPO settings appeared properly in the Internet Settings after the gpupdate, I naturally assumed they had been applied. – eaj Oct 6, 2011 at 14:30
1 Ok. I wonder if the network connection to the share was still alive, then had to be recreated to be recognized under the new security zone setting for the policy to take affect? – will Oct 6, 2011 at 15:20
1 That sounds like a pretty good theory to me. You win the green checkmark. :) – eaj Oct 6, 2011 at 15:27

The shell (explorer.exe) is caching the policy. Simply restart the shell and many settings will start to be applied. There is no need to log out/back in for many scenarios.

Exiting the shell:

Windows 7: Ctrl+Shift+right click on blank area of Start Menu | Exit Explorer
Windows 8: Ctrl+Shift+right click on Start Menu button | Exit Explorer

Restarting shell:

Ctrl+Shift+Esc, File | New Task (Run...) | "explorer"

You must log in to answer this question.

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Security Zones in Edge

Last updated: 23 May 2024

Browsers As Decision Makers

As a part of every page load, browsers have to make dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of decisions — should a particular API be available? Should a resource load be permitted? Should script be allowed to run? Should video be allowed to start playing automatically? Should cookies or credentials be sent on network requests? The list is long.

In many cases, decisions are governed by two inputs: a user setting, and the URL of the page for which the decision is being made.

In the old Internet Explorer web platform, each of these decisions was called an URLAction , and the ProcessUrlAction(url, action,…) API allowed the browser or another web client to query its security manager for guidance on how to behave.

To simplify the configuration for the user or their administrator, the legacy platform classified sites into five 1 different Security Zones:

Local Machine
Local Intranet

Users could use the Internet Control Panel to assign specific sites to Zones and to configure the permission results for each zone. When making a decision, the browser would first map the execution context (site) to a Zone, then consult the setting for that URLAction for that Zone to decide what to do.

Reasonable defaults like “ Automatically satisfy authentication challenges from my Intranet ” meant that most users never needed to change any settings away from their defaults.

In corporate or other managed environments, administrators can use Group Policy to assign specific sites to Zones (via “Site to Zone Assignment List” policy) and specify the settings for URLActions on a per-zone basis. This allowed Microsoft IT, for instance, to configure the browser with rules like “ Treat https://mail.microsoft.com as a part of my Intranet and allow popups and file downloads without warning messages. “

Beyond manual administrative or user assignment of sites to Zones, the platform used additional heuristics that could assign sites to the Local Intranet Zone . In particular, the browser would assign dotless hostnames (e.g. https://payroll ) to the Intranet Zone, and if a Proxy Configuration script was used, any sites configured to bypass the proxy would be mapped to the Intranet Zone.

Applications hosting Web Browser Controls, by default, inherit the Windows Zone configuration settings, meaning that changes made for Internet Explorer are inherited by other applications. In relatively rare cases, the host application might supply its own Security Manager and override URL Policy decisions for embedded Web Browser Control instances.

The Trouble with Zones

While powerful and convenient, Zones are simultaneously problematic bug farms :

Users might find that their mission critical corporate sites stopped working if their computer’s Group Policy configuration was outdated.
Users might manually set configuration options to unsafe values without realizing it.
Attempts to automatically provide isolation of cookies and other data by Zone led to unexpected behavior , especially for federated authentication scenarios .

Zone-mapping heuristics are extra problematic

A Web Developer working on a site locally might find that it worked fine (Intranet Zone), but failed spectacularly for their users when deployed to production (Internet Zone).
Users were often completely flummoxed to find that the same page on a single server behaved very differently depending on how they referred to it — e.g. http://localhost/ (Intranet Zone) vs. http://127.0.0.1/ (Internet Zone).

The fact that proxy configuration scripts can push sites into the Intranet zone proves especially challenging, because:

A synchronous API call might need to know what Zone a caller is in, but determining that could, in the worst case, take tens of seconds — the time needed to discover the location of the proxy configuration script, download it, and run the FindProxyForUrl() function within it. This could lead to a hang and unresponsive UI.
A site’s Zone can change at runtime without restarting the browser (say, when moving a laptop between home and work networks, or when connecting or disconnecting from a VPN).
An IT Department might not realize the implications of returning DIRECT from a proxy configuration script and accidentally map the entire untrusted web into the highly-privileged Intranet Zone. (Microsoft IT accidentally did this circa 2011, and Google IT accidentally did it circa 2016).
Some features like AppContainer Network Isolation are based on firewall configuration and have no inherent relationship to the browser’s Zone settings.

Legacy Edge

The legacy Edge browser (aka Spartan, Edge 18 and below) inherited the Zone architecture from its Internet Explorer predecessor with a few simplifying changes:

Windows’ five built-in Zones were collapsed to three: Internet (Internet), the Trusted Zone (Intranet+Trusted), and the Local Computer Zone. The Restricted Zone was removed.
Zone to URLAction mappings were hardcoded into the browser, ignoring group policies and settings in the Internet Control Panel.

Use of Zones in Chromium

Chromium goes further and favors making decisions based on explicitly-configured site lists and/or command-line arguments.

Nevertheless, in the interest of expediency, Chromium today uses Windows’ Security Zones by default in two places:

When deciding how to handle File Downloads, and
When deciding whether or not to release Windows Integrated Authentication (Kerberos/NTLM) credentials automatically.

For the first one, if you’ve configured the setting Launching applications and unsafe files to Disable in your Internet Control Panel’s Security tab, Chromium will block file downloads with a note: Couldn't download - Blocked .

Similarly, because Chrome uses the Windows Attachment Execute Services API to write a Mark-of-the-Web on downloaded files , the Launching applications and unsafe files setting (aka URLACTION_SHELL_EXECUTE_HIGHRISK ) for the download’s originating Zone controls whether the MoTW is written. If this setting is set to Enable (as it is for LMZ and Intranet), no MoTW is written to the file’s Zone.Identifier alternate data stream. If the Zone’s URLAction value is set to Prompt (as it is for Trusted Sites and Internet zones), the Security Zone identifier is written to the ZoneId property in the Zone.Identifier file.

By setting a policy, Administrators can optionally configure Edge or configure Chrome to skip SmartScreen/SafeBrowsing reputation checks for File Downloads that original from the Intranet/Trusted Zone.

For the second use of Zones, Chromium will process URLACTION_CREDENTIALS_USE to decide whether Windows Integrated Authentication is used automatically, or the user should instead see a manual authentication prompt. By setting the AuthServerAllowList policy , an admin may prevent Zone Mapping from being used to decide whether credentials should be sent. Aside: the manual authentication prompt is really a bit of a mistake– the browser should instead just show a prompt: “Would you like to [Send Credentials] or [Stay Anonymous]” dialog box, rather than forcing the user to retype credentials that Windows already has.

Even Limited Use is Controversial

Any respect for Zones (or network addresses 2 ) in Chromium remains controversial— the Chrome team has launched and abandoned plans to remove all support a few times, but ultimately given up under the weight of enterprise compat concerns. The arguments for complete removal include:

Zones are poorly documented, and Windows Zone behavior is poorly understood.
The performance/deadlock risks mentioned earlier ( Intranet Zone mappings can come from a WPAD-discovered proxy script).
Zones are Windows-only (meaning they prevent drop-in replacement of Windows by ChromeOS).

A sort of compromise was reached: By configuring an explicit site list policy for Windows Authentication, an administrator disables the browser’s URLACTION_CREDENTIALS_USE check, so Zones Policy is not consulted. A similar option is not presently available for Downloads.

Zones in the New Edge

Beyond the two usages of Zones inherited from upstream (Downloads and Auth), the new Chromium-based Edge browser adds three more:

Administrators can configure Internet Explorer Mode to open all Intranet sites in IEMode . Those IEMode tabs are really running Internet Explorer, and they use Zones for everything that IE did.
Administrators can configure Intranet Zone sites to navigate to file:// URIs which is otherwise forbidden .
Administrators can configure Intranet Zone sites to not be put into Enhanced Security Mode .

Update: This is very much a corner case, but I’ll mention it anyway. On downlevel operating systems (Windows 7/8/8.1), logging into the browser for sync makes use of a Windows dialog box that contains a Web Browser Control (based on MSHTML) that loads the login page. If you adjust your Windows Security Zones settings to block JavaScript from running in the Internet Zone, you will find that you’re unable to log into the new browser .

Downsides/Limitations

While it’s somewhat liberating that we’ve moved away from the bug farm of Security Zones, it also gives us one less tool to make things convenient or compatible for our users and IT admins.

We’ve already heard from some customers that they’d like to have a different security and privacy posture for sites on their “Intranet”, with behaviors like:

Disable the Tracking Prevention , “Block 3rd party cookie”, and other privacy-related controls for the Intranet (like IE/Edge did).
Allow navigation to file:// URIs from the Intranet like IE/Edge did (policy was added to Edge 95).
Disable “ HTTP and mixed content are unsafe ” and “ TLS/1.0 and TLS/1.1 are deprecated ” nags. ( Update: Now pretty obsolete as these no longer exist )
Skip SmartScreen website checks for the Trusted/Intranet zones ( available for Download checks only).
Allow ClickOnce/DirectInvoke / Auto-opening Downloads from the Intranet without a prompt. Previously, Edge (Spartan)/IE respected the FTA_OpenIsSafe bit in the EditFlags for the application.manifest progid if-and-only-if the download source was in the Intranet/Trusted Sites Zone. As of Edge 94, other policies can be used.
Allow launching application protocols from the Intranet without a prompt .
Drop all Referrers when navigating from the Intranet to the Internet; leave Referrers alone when browsing the Intranet. (Update: less relevant now ).
Internet Explorer and legacy Edge automatically send your client certificate to Intranet sites that ask for it. The AutoSelectCertificateForUrls policy permits Edge to send a client certificate to specified sites without a prompt, but this policy requires the administrator to manually specify the site list.
Block all (or most) extensions from touching Intranet pages to reduce the threat of data leaks ( runtime_blocked_hosts policy).
Guide all Intranet navigations into an appropriate profile or container (a la Detangle ).
Upstream , there’s a longstanding desire to help protect intranets/local machine from cross-site-request-forgery attacks; blocking loads and navigations of private resources from the Internet Zone is somewhat simpler than blocking them from Intranet Sites. The current plan is to protect RFC1918-reserved address space .

At present, only AutoSelectCertificateForUrls , AutoOpenFileTypes, AutoLaunchProtocolsFromOrigins . manual cookie controls, and mixed content nags support policy-pushed site lists, but their list syntax doesn’t have any concept of “the entire Intranet” (all dotless hosts, hosts that bypass proxy).

You’ll notice that each of these has potential security impact (e.g. an XSS on a privileged “Intranet” page becomes more dangerous; unqualified hostnames can result in name collisions ), but having the ability to scope some powerful features to only “Intranet” sites might also improve security by reducing attack surface.

As browser designers, we must weigh the enterprise impact of every change we make, and being able to say “ This won’t apply to your intranet if you don’t want it to ” would be very liberating. Unfortunately, building such an escape hatch is also the recipe for accumulating technical debt and permitting the corporate intranets to “rust” to the point that they barely resemble the modern public web.

Best Practices

Throughout Chromium, many features are designed respect an individual policy-pushed list of sites to control their behavior. If you were forward-thinking enough to structure your intranet such that your hostnames are of the form:

https://payroll. contoso-intranet.com
https://timecard. contoso-intranet.com
https://sharepoint. contoso-intranet.com

…Congratulations, you’ve lucked into a best practice. You can configure each desired policy with a *.contoso-intranet.com entry and your entire Intranet will be opted in.

Unfortunately, while wildcards are supported, there’s presently no way to express the concept of “any dotless hostname.”

Why is that unfortunate? For over twenty years, Internet Explorer and legacy Edge mapped domain names like https://payroll , https://timecard , and https://sharepoint/ to the Intranet Zone by default. As a result, many smaller companies have benefitted from this simple heuristic that requires no configuration changes by the user or the IT department.

Opportunity: Maybe such a DOTLESS_HOSTS token should exist in the Chromium policy syntax. This seems unlikely to happen. Edge has been on Chromium for over two years now, and there’s no active plan to introduce such a feature.

Internet Explorer and Legacy Edge use a system of five Zones and 88+ URLActions to make security decisions for web content, based on the host of a target site.
Chromium (New Edge, Chrome) uses a system of Site Lists and permission checks to make security decisions for web content, based on the hostname of a target site.

There does not exist an exact mapping between these two systems, which exist for similar reasons but implemented using very different mechanisms.

In general, users should expect to be able to use the new Edge without configuring anything; many of the URLActions that were exposed by IE/Spartan have no logical equivalent in modern browsers.

If the new Edge browser does not behave in the desired way for some customer scenario, then we must examine the details of what isn’t working as desired to determine whether there exists a setting (e.g. a Group Policy-pushed SiteList) that provides the desired experience.

1 Technically, it was possible for an administrator to create “Custom Security Zones” (with increasing ZoneIds starting at #5), but such a configuration has not been officially supported for at least fifteen years, and it’s been a periodic source of never-will-be-fixed bugs.

2 Beyond those explicit uses of Windows’ Zone Manager, various components in Chromium have special handling for localhost/loopback addresses, and some have special recognition of RFC1918 private IP Address ranges, e.g. SafeBrowsing handling, navigation restrictions, and Network Quality Estimation. As of 2022, Chrome did a big refactor to allow determination of whether or not the target site’s IP address is in the public IP Address space or the private IP address space (e.g. inherently Intranet) as a part of the Private Network Access spec . This check should now be basically free (it’s getting used on every resource load) and it may make sense to start using it in a lot of places to approximate the “ This target is not on the public Internet ” check. Within Edge, the EMIE List is another mechanism by which sites’ hostnames may result in different handling.

Ancient History

Security Zones were introduced with Internet Explorer 4, released back in 1997:

The UI has only changed a little bit since that time, with most of the changes happening in IE5. There were only tiny tweaks in IE6, 7, and 8.

2 thoughts on “ Security Zones in Edge ”

In IE it is possible to see which zone is active on a page you’re currently viewing (alt to show menu bar, -> file -> properties).

Is it possible to see this in the new Edge?

No, although as noted, the Zone isn’t used for very much. To see the Zone, you’d have to reload the same page in IE (or use a command line utility or similar).

Troubleshoot "Internet Explorer Zonemapping" failures when processing Group Policy

4 contributors

When you execute GPUpdate /force , you may see the following output:

When you run GPRESULT /H GPReport.html and examine the report, you see the following information under Component Status :

The System event log contains an event ID 1085 that indicates a Group Policy processing error related to "Internet Explorer ZoneMapping," like the following one:

This event can occur if you enter an invalid entry within the Site To Zone Assignment List policy in the following paths:

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\Internet Control Panel\Security Page

User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\Internet Control Panel\Security Page

The "Site To Zone Assignment List" policy

The format of the Site To Zone Assignment List policy is described within the policy. This policy setting allows you to manage a list of sites that you want to associate with a particular security zone. These zone numbers have associated security settings that apply to all sites in the zone.

Internet Explorer has four security zones, which are used by this policy setting to associate sites with zones. They're numbered 1 to 4 and defined in descending order of most to least trusted:

Local Intranet zone
Trusted Sites zone
Internet zone
Restricted Sites zone

The security settings can be set for each of these zones through other policy settings, and their default settings are:

Trusted Sites zone (Low template)
Intranet zone (Medium-Low template)
Internet zone (Medium template)
Restricted Sites zone (High template)

The Local Machine zone and its locked-down equivalent have special security settings that protect your local computer.

If you enable this policy setting, you can enter a list of sites and their related zone numbers. The association of a site with a zone ensures that the security settings for the specified zone are applied to that site. For each entry that you add to the list, enter the following information:

Valuename : It's used to specify a host for an intranet site, or a fully qualified domain name for other sites. The valuename may also include a specific protocol. For example, if you enter https://www.contoso.com as the valuename , other protocols aren't affected. If you just enter www.contoso.com , all protocols for that site are affected, including http, https, ftp, and so on. The site may also be expressed as an IP address (such as 127.0.0.1) or a range (such as 127.0.0.1-10). To avoid creating conflicting policies, don't include other characters after the domain, such as a trailing slash or URL path. For example, the policy settings for www.contoso.com and www.contoso.com/mail would be treated as the same policy setting by Internet Explorer, and therefore, conflict.

Value : It's the number of the zone you want to associate the site with security settings. The Value of the above Internet Explorer zones is 1 to 4 .

When you enter data in the Group Policy Editor, there's no syntax or logical error checking available. This error checking is performed on the client when the Internet Explorer Zonemapping Group Policy Extension converts the registry into the format used by Internet Explorer. During that conversion, the same methods are implemented when you manually add a site to a specific security zone. If an entry is rejected when you add it manually, the conversion also fails if the Group Policy is used and the event 1085 is issued. For example, when you try to add a wildcard entry to a top-level domain (TLD) (like *.com or *.co.uk ) while adding a site, the wildcard entry is rejected. Now, the question is, which entries are treated as TLDs; by default, the following schemes are treated as TLDs in Internet Explorer:

Flat domains (such as .com ).
Two-letter domains in a two-letter TLD (such as .co.uk ).

The following blog post includes a granular explanation of domains:

Understanding Domain Names in Internet Explorer

To identify incorrect entries in the policy, download and run the IEDigest tool. After creating a report and opening it in your web browser, you'll see a Warnings section where incorrect entries are named. These entries need to be removed (or corrected) in the Group Policy. Here's an example of how it looks like when trying to add *.com to a zone:

Warnings Description Key Name Value Invalid entry in Site to Zone Assignment List. Click here for more info HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMapKey *.com is invalid

More information

Intranet site is identified as an Internet site when you use an FQDN or an IP address
Security Zones in Microsoft Edge

Third-party contact disclaimer

Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find additional information about this topic. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of third-party contact information.

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Additional resources

How To Add Sites to Internet Explorer Restricted Zone

In this post we will see the steps on how to add sites to Internet Explorer restricted zone.

To configure Internet Explorer security zones there are multiple ways to do it, in this post we will configure a group policy for the users and use Site to Zone assignment list policy setting to add the websites or URL to the restricted site zone.

This policy setting allows you to manage a list of sites that you want to associate with a particular security zone. Internet Explorer has 4 security zones, numbered 1-4, and these are used by this policy setting to associate sites to zones.

Intranet zone
Trusted Sites zone
Internet zone
Restricted Sites zone

The zone numbers have associated security settings that apply to all of the sites in the zone. Using the Site to Zone assignment list policy setting we will see how to add sites to the Internet Explorer restricted zone.

Please note that Site to Zone Assignment List policy setting is available for both Computer Configuration and User Configuration.

Launch the Group Policy Management Tool, right click on the domain and create a new group policy. Right the policy and click Edit .

How To Add Sites to Internet Explorer Restricted Zone

In the Group Policy Management Editor navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page.

If you want to apply the group policy for the computers then navigate to – Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explore r > Internet Control Panel > Security Page.

On the right hand side, right click the policy setting Site to Zone Assignment List and click Edit .

Click Enabled first and then under the Options click Show . You need to enter the zone assignments. As stated earlier in this post Internet Explorer has 4 security zones and the zone numbers have associated security settings that apply to all of the sites in the zone.

We will be adding a URL to the Restricted Sites Zone . So enter the value name as the site URL that to Restricted Sites zone and enter the value as 4 . Click OK and close the Group Policy Management Editor.

We will be applying the group policy to a group that consists of users. In the Security Filtering section, click Add and select the group .

Login to the client computer and launch the Internet Explorer . Click on Tools > Internet Options > Security Tab > Restricted Sites > Click Sites .

Notice that the URL is added to the Restricted Sites zone and user cannot remove it from the list.

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Good article Prajwal .Detailed Explanation on how to add sites to internet explorer restricted zone .Keep it up .I seen your videos also in YouTube its really great.Thanks for sharing this info.

Hi Prajwal, Thank you for your article. Is there any way to block sites in all browsers.

Block all sites ?. Why would you do that ?.

I think you misunderstood the user’s question. The user was asking if there was a way to block any particular website in ALL browsers. Not just Internet Explorer.

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Internet Options to add Trusted Site Greyed Out - SysPreped Windows 10 LTSB

I just deployed an custom Windows 10 ISO I created and I can't set my local file server as a trusted site in internet options. The site button is greyed out. The only change I made in the image was adding the site pre-sysprep and now It not only didn't keep the settings through the sysprep process, but also locked me from making changes to internet options. I did test this image on another computer before adding the site pre-sysprep and post deploy I was able to add the site via normal methods. Clearly somehow adding the site to trusted sites before sysprepping the OS caused the issue. Unfortunatley, this is not an easy computer to re-deploy or I would just remake the ISO and re-deploy.

Update Re Comment [The Goal is to get RID of this Message]:

I don't use IE or care about its "options", I just want to get rid of this nag message when I run an exe from my fileserver as almost all my software is installed on the server.

Any idea how I can reset the settings to default?
How can I add the site via RegEdit? I know I only need to add one site and I use the IP not DNS.

I know the keys are related to HKLM/SOFTWARE/Policies/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Internet settings/ , I'm thinking of exporting the entire "tree" from the other computer and importing it here, but that's a hassle as well as its not my computer.

Any ideas!? Thanks!

PS: Windows 10 LTSB v 1607 x64 -Up-2-date

Update: I had IE11 not installed, by installing it, Internet Options now look as they used to, but the option is still greyed out!

Update 2: I have "reset" IE Options, but still Grey :(

internet-explorer
internet-security

I see the same photo. That registry key you mentioned shouldn’t exist at all if you don’t want policies enforced on your browser. Just delete it. Or rename it, if you want to see the effects. – Appleoddity Mar 12, 2018 at 23:49
I dont really care about IE, my goal is to stop the popup when I run an exe from my file server over SMB. So I'm not sure how to apply that to your comment lol – FreeSoftwareServers Mar 12, 2018 at 23:51
@Appleoddity I updated an image to explain just incase – FreeSoftwareServers Mar 12, 2018 at 23:53
Windows Explorer respects IE group policies. Are you an Administrator? – Ramhound Mar 13, 2018 at 0:17
I'm logged in as one, but I haven't messed much with Group Policy and I was under the impression sysprep generalize wouldn't keep group policy anyway. What GPO would I look at? – FreeSoftwareServers Mar 13, 2018 at 0:20

3 Answers 3

The issue was that Group Policy was somehow blocking me from adding into IE Options like I'm used to.

You want to configure Group Policy like so:

Navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\Internet Control Panel\Security Page >> Site to Zone Assignment List

The "Values" are as follows:

After configuration open CMD in Administrator mode and run the following:

Now reboot and test!

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1182041-gpo-for-local-intranet-site http://www.grouppolicy.biz/2010/03/how-to-use-group-policy-to-configure-internet-explorer-security-zone-sites/

This worked for me even though it's for Windows XP.

All credit to the original author.

FYI, my system specs are:

LINK: Sites" button and "Custom Level" slider are grayed out in Internet Options - Security tab

This is the contents of that site should it ever get taken down.

When you open Internet Options - Security tab and click on any Zone (except Internet Zone), the Sites button may be grayed out. As a result, you may be unable to add or remove a website to the specified Zone. Additionally, you may also notice that the Custom level slider is grayed out. This prevents you from customizing the Security level for that particular Zone.

The Flags value in the registry governs the above two options (and more) for each Zone. See Description of Internet Explorer security zones registry entries for more information on the Flags value.

To enable the Sites button and the Custom Level slider for that particular Zone, follow these steps:

Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\{Zone ID}

Backup the key by exporting it to a REG file.

In the right-pane, double-click Flags and click Decimal

Add 3 to the existing Value data

Example: If Flags value reads 0 (Decimal), set it to 3 (i.e., 0 + 1 + 2 )

Flags value listing (from MS-KB 182569 )

Close Registry Editor and restart your machine and follow the route in your OP.

For me, the apply button was greyed out but it works none the less.

The entry I have entered is file://PRINCE_NASEEM but yours will differ.

Nice, this looks like it enables the menu operations I'm used to vs fixing via GPO. This would likely be the better fix for me to use before "Sysprepping" an image. – FreeSoftwareServers Jun 10, 2019 at 9:07
Thanks, I'm glad you found this useful. It's good because, if it works in win XP, then there's a good chance it works right up to win 10. – Ste Jun 11, 2019 at 10:09

I answer late, but I have the same problem. I recovered the .reg on a pc which was not impacted.

Copy the code, insert it into a text file that you rename to .reg.

You must log in to answer this question.

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This article explains how to add StoreFront site to client trust site zone, via group policy.

Instructions

To configure via group policy:

Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Tools > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page
Double click to the "Site to zone assignment list". Enable it,
Click Show, add website as value name and 1, 2, 3 or 4 as value

Page feedback

COMMENTS

internet explorer
The key should contain several string values with a name indicating the URL and numeric data indicating the zone, one of the following by default. ... double-click on the Site to Zone Assignment List option, then click Show... trusted sites are the ones with 2 in the Value column ... sites on your local network. 2 = Trusted Sites zone - sites ...
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The value of the DWORD is the same as the numeric value of the security zone where the domain is added. The ... Value Setting ----- 0 My Computer 1 Local Intranet Zone 2 Trusted sites Zone 3 Internet Zone 4 Restricted Sites Zone Note. By default, My Computer does not appear in the Zone box on the Security tab as it is locked down to help ...
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Group Policy Template "Site to Zone Assignment List"
Open Group Policy Management Console. Navigate to the desired GPO or create a new one. Expand User Configuration or Computer Configuration and go to Preferences -> Windows Settings -> Registry. Right-click and select New -> Registry Item. Configure the Registry Item to delete the specified entries under the ZoneMap registry key.
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If you want to lock it down and add as needed, GPO will work just fine, just go to Win Components/Internet Explorer/Internet Control Panel/Security Page - Site to Zone Assignment - enable the policy, click List and add the sites as needed, a value of 1 is Intranet a value of 2 would be Trusted. Yes. I want to lock it down so I will do it in ...
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When possible, use the computer configuration option as it will not impact user logons. When you enable the setting, you will be prompted for a value name (the website) and a value (the zone list). Here are the possible values and the zone that they correspond to: 1 = Intranet/Local Zone. 2 = Trusted Sites. 3 = Internet/Public Zone.
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Double-click on Site to Zone Assignment List in the right pane. Step 3: In the Site to Zone Assignment List window, select Enabled then tap on Show button under Options. Step 4: In the column under Value name, input the website. Then Type 2 in the box next to it. Tips: Internet Explorer includes four safe zones, respectively, one to four. To ...
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In the second box, labeled "Enter the value of the item to be added:", enter the number that corresponds to the Internet Explorer security zone that the site should be added to. The zone assignments are as follows: 1 - Intranet Zone; 2 - Trusted Sites Zone; 3 - Internet Zone; 4 - Restricted Sites Zone; Once the zone assignment has ...
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The "Site To Zone Assignment List" policy. The format of the Site To Zone Assignment List policy is described within the policy. This policy setting allows you to manage a list of sites that you want to associate with a particular security zone. These zone numbers have associated security settings that apply to all sites in the zone.
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In the Security Filtering section, click Add and select the group. Login to the client computer and launch the Internet Explorer. Click on Tools > Internet Options > Security Tab > Restricted Sites > Click Sites. Notice that the URL is added to the Restricted Sites zone and user cannot remove it from the list. In this post we will see the steps ...
Internet Options to add Trusted Site Greyed Out
In the right-pane, double-click Flags and click Decimal. Add 3 to the existing Value data. Example: If Flags value reads 0 (Decimal), set it to 3 (i.e., 0 + 1 + 2) Flags value listing (from MS-KB 182569) Flags value Setting. 1 Allow changes to custom settings. 2 Allow users to add Web sites to this zone.
How to Add StoreFront Site to Client Trust Site Zone
To configure via group policy: Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Tools > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page. Double click to the "Site to zone assignment list". Enable it, Click Show, add website as value name and 1, 2, 3 or 4 as value. Was this page helpful?

a blog by Sander Berkouwer

HOWTO: Add the required Hybrid Identity URLs to the Trusted Sites list of Internet Explorer and Edge

Why look at the Trusted Sites?

Possible negative impact (What could go wrong?)

Getting ready

The URLs to add

*.microsoft.com

*.msappproxy.net

Other Office 365 services

How to add the URLs to the Trusted Sites zone

Further reading

2 Responses to HOWTO: Add the required Hybrid Identity URLs to the Trusted Sites list of Internet Explorer and Edge

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