That's how our network guys do it at our shop. Wouldn't it be nice if there
was some sort of security  clone tool? There are of course high-end and
expensive tools designed to managed networks that can document the entire
structure, down to security settings  for individual servers, that would be
very helpful to managing these settings. But I haven't seen anything local
to Windows that would help.

Using the UI that ships with SPS, I know of no way to do this. Perhaps
it can be scripted, however..........

PKMCDO is your friend. You can script the copying  of permissions from
one folder  to another. Look at the KnowledgeFolder object in the SPS
SDK.

Also, you should use local server groups (if you are not already). This
makes recreating a certain folder security  structure a lot easier.

If you ever try to move your server, ie server
dies, you restore to another server, and you do not have the exact same local
groups defined, watch out! I suggest always using domain level groups. That way
if you ever have to restore to another server the security  accounts are still
legit. I think Best Practices also state to stay with domain level if possible.

You may be right. The local server security  groups is what a Microsoft SPS
consultant recommended when we set up SPS back in March, so that's what we
went with. Maybe that's why I have so many problems... No, really it has worked well so far.

They probably will work fine unless you move to or restore to another
machine without local groups defined. If my memory serves me correctly,
any missing group or user simply defaulted to everyone group, which
might be real bad if it is sensitive info.