Change of SecuMail® filtering for old Office files
A good week ago, we had already temporarily blocked DOC files because they contained a lot of macro viruses. Unfortunately, the problem has been occurring massively again since Sunday. Virus scanners, on the other hand, only help to a limited extent, as there are always a few hours between the appearance of a new virus variant and its detection by the virus scanners. This applies to the two virus scanners we use as well as to the virus scanner at your company. To make matters worse, the actual malicious code of these macro viruses is not contained in the email itself, but is only loaded in the MS Office program by a macro.
The only remedy is consistently installed security updates from Microsoft.
Please note that Office versions 2003 and earlier are no longer supported by Microsoft.
We have therefore decided to change the default policy in SecuMail® so that the old Office file formats (DOC, XLS, PPT) are considered potentially harmful files and are retained by the SecuMail® filter.
The more modern Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) are not affected by this filter rule and are not filtered out.
Our new default policy is:
- old Office documents (DOC, XLS, PPT) are executable files
- Mails with executable files as attachments are being held
- The user immediately receives a message that this mail has been held
If you would like to have an e-mail forwarded from time to time, you can reply to the notification. We will then be happy to forward the mail manually during the regular support hours (weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
As the administrator of a SecuMail® Business filter, you can forward blocked emails at any time via the Secumail web cockpit.
If the old Office files are still in use in your e-mail communication and you consider the risk of infection, e.g. through automatic updates and sensitization of your employees, to be justifiable, we will be happy to configure the e-mail policy for SecuMail® Business filters according to your specifications. Please send us an e-mail to secumail@wor.net. Unfortunately, an individual configuration of the SecuMail® Office filter is not possible.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Your SecuMail® Team