Microsoft has released the public preview of an Office 365 ProPlus security feature that promises to catch malware when users open Office documents outside the Protected View sandbox.
Safe Documents or 'Safe Docs' is Microsoft's latest effort to shield users from malicious documents coming into an organization.
While the Office Protected View sandbox does isolate the operating system from malicious code in a document, users often exit Protected View to get a job done – for example, when they need to print a physical copy – exposing the organization's network to ransomware, information theft, and other threats.
While many people these days only print documents when it's absolutely necessary, printing is still a common request in office environments, according to Ron Pessner, Microsoft's partner director of program management.
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So Safe Docs is aimed at those occasions, such as printing, where users really do need to exit Protected View.
"Safe Documents verifies that the documents are safe to open outside the container if [users] have a need to do that," Pessner told ZDNet.
Safe Docs uses the same backend as the Microsoft Defender antivirus service, meaning it checks the file against all known potential threats before the document is opened in a Protect View container on the PC.
The idea is to make it easier for workers to get the job done. For example, Safe Docs means users aren't individually asked to decide whether a document should be trusted before opening it. < ..
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