Title

The ability to send personal information to Office must be disabled. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

This policy setting controls whether users can send personal information to Office. When users choose to send information Office 2016 applications automatically send information to Office. If you enable this policy setting, users will opt into sending personal information to Office. If your organization has policies that govern the use of external resources, opting users into the program might cause them to violate these policies. If you disable this policy setting, Office 2016 users cannot send personal information to Office. If you do not configure this policy setting, the behavior is the equivalent of setting the policy to "Enabled".

Check Content

Verify the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2016 -> Privacy -> Trust Center -> "Send personal information" is set to "Disabled". Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\software\policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common Criteria: If the value sendcustomerdata is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

Fix Text

Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2016 -> Privacy -> Trust Center -> "Send personal information" to "Disabled".

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-238043r879887_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-238043

Group Title: SRG-APP-000516

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.