Microsoft plans to allow Office 365 administrators to ensure that end-users cannot override organization-wide policies set to block active content in "Trusted Documents.".
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Redmond says that trusted documents are files with active content (e.g., ActiveX controls, macros, and Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) functions that do not require user interaction) that open without warnings after the content is activated.
Trusted documents will open automatically without prompts even if they are modified by adding new (potentially malicious) active content, bypassing Office's Protected View, which opens files from potentially unsafe locations as read-only.
“However, the message appears if the file has been moved since you last trusted the file. Once you trust a document, it does not open in Protected View. Therefore, you should only trust documents if you trust the source of the file,” Microsoft explains.
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Part of an ongoing effort to increase Office security
“We are changing the behavior of Office applications to enforce policies that block Active Content (e.g. macros, ActiveX, DDE) in Trusted Documents,” Microsoft said in its Microsoft 365 roadmap.
“Previously, Active Content was able to run on trusted documents, even when an IT administrator had set a policy to block it.”
As part of an ongoing effort to increase Office security, IT administrators' choice to block Active Content even for trusted files will always take precedence over the user's choice to trust a document.
This will translate to all documents with embedded active content opening in Protected View, despite the user's willingness to ignore security reminding them that all active content has been disabled.
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Microsoft plans to roll out this new feature by the end of October, making it generally available worldwide across all environments.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
