Understanding Mail-Enabled Security Groups

Question

I'm trying to use a mail-enabled security group in Exchange to apply anti-spam policy to a select set of addresses. The description shown for mail-enabled security groups says: "Sends messages to all members of the group and gives access to resources like OneDrive, SharePoint, and admin roles." This has me hesitant, because I don't want the group to function as a distribution list or automatically grant access to other Microsoft 365 resources. My goal is for this group to be more of a static grouping of mailboxes that I can target with an anti-spam policy nothing more. Can it be used as a simple container for applying anti-spam policies to a set of users?

Answer 1

It is indeed a simple "container". What they mean with the description is that you can use said container to delegate access to various functionalities or resources, but it does not automatically provision such, unlike using a Microsoft 365 Group. As for the distribution list aspect of it, you can simply hide the group from the GAL, or configure delivery restrictions to avoid it being used as such.