Nesting Distribution Group within Security Group

Quick sanity check - If I nest an Active Directory distribution group within an Active Directory Security group, will permissions assigned to the AD Security group cascade to the members of the distribution group nested within the security group, or do I need to convert the distribution group to a mail-enabled security group?

The context (if it helps) is that another team has given me a security group to use to give permissions to their team, and after granting permissions to that security group, nobody has permissions. Looking at the membership of that security group, it is a distribution group containing their people. I assume that is why it is not working, but just wanted a confirmation before I push back.


Distribution groups are not security principals if I remember correctly, and therefore cannot propagate secutiry permissions to their members. Pretty sure you need a mail-enabled security group.