Details

Under normal circumstances the installed COM add-ins are applications that have been approved and intentionally deployed by the organization and therefore they should not pose a security threat. However, if malware has infected systems it is possible that the malware will use the COM add-in feature to perform unauthorized actions. This setting enforces the default configuration, and therefore is unlikely to cause significant usability issues for most users.

Solution

Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Outlook 2013 -> Security ‘Configure Add-In Trust Level’ to ‘Enabled (Trust all loaded and installed COM addins)’.

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://iasecontent.disa.mil/stigs/zip/U_MS_Outlook_2013_V1R13_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: System and Communications Protection.This control applies to the following type of system Windows.

References

• 800-53|SC-18(4)
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-001170
• Rule-ID|SV-53919r1_rule
• STIG-ID|DTOO236
• Vuln-ID|V-17566

Source

• Tenable.com/audits