Deploying Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Office

This week is all about Microsoft Defender Application Guard (Application Guard) for Office. It’s a follow up on this post of almost 2 years ago. That time the focus was simply on getting started with Application Guard and it slightly missed out on Application Guard for Office. This time Application Guard for Office will be the main focus. Application Guard for Office uses hardware isolation to isolate untrusted Office files, by running the Office application in an isolated Hyper-V container. That isolation makes sure that anything potentially harmful in those untrusted Office files, happens within that isolated Hyper-V container and is isolated from the host operating system. That isolation provides a nice, but resource intensive, additional security layer. This post will start with a quick …

Read more

Managing privacy controls for Office products

This week is all about managing privacy controls for Office products. That includes Office on Android devices, Office on iOS devices, Office for Mac devices, Office for the web, and Microsoft 365 apps for enterprise on Windows devices. Most organizations often already have a good look at the required configurations options for the privacy controls on Windows devices. Office for other platforms, however, are often forgotten. Just like Office for the web. Good thing, though, is that there are nowadays multiple privacy controls available that can be configured for Office on all platforms. For some platforms there are even multiple configurations options. Best part of those configuration options is that there is also an option to configure the privacy controls cross platforms. This post will …

Read more

Getting started with Microsoft Defender Application Guard

This week is back to Windows. This week is all about Microsoft Defender Application Guard (Application Guard). Recently Application Guard functionality was added to Microsoft 365 apps for enterprise and those configuration options recently became available in Microsoft Intune. A good trigger for a new post. Application Guard uses hardware isolation to isolate untrusted sites and untrusted Office files, by running the application in an isolated Hyper-V container. That isolation makes sure that anything that happens within the isolated Hyper-V container is isolated from the host operating system. That provides an additional security layer. This post will start with a quick introduction about Application Guard, followed with the steps to configure Application Guard by using Microsoft Intune. Introduction to Microsoft Defender Application Guard Application Guard …

Read more