Latest release of Outlook appears to make Outlook Security Manager ineffective

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Latest release of Outlook appears to make Outlook Security Manager ineffective
 
Peter Shadbolt




Posts: 8
Joined: 2022-08-14
We have been using the active X Security Manager for Microsoft Outlook successfully with Outlook 365 for some time.
However, a recent update to Outlook may have changed the treatment of the Outlook Security Manager.

The Outlook Trust Center has three options available for "Programatic Access":

- Warn me about suspicious activity red
- Always warn me about suspicious activitiy.
- Never warn me about suspicious activity (not recommended).

In our case, the end users are using the recommended setting. With this set, the Outlook Security Manager has no effect and the user is prompted with a security prompt each time our application creates an outlook mail message.

We believe this is due to the "antivirus software is inactive" condition of the trust center option. In our case, the end user is working on a Windows Server, which cannot determine the antivirus status and therefore the outlook behaviour defaults to always warns/prompts the user.

For reference, this MS article describes why Outlook shows the antivirus status as unavailable:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/troubleshoot/security/outlook-trust-center-shows-antivirus-status-as-unavailable

Can you please advise how we can resolve this issue, or work around the behaviour?

Thanks

Outlook Version: 2207 Build 16.0.15427.20166
Posted 14 Aug, 2022 16:52:10 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Peter,

What Security Manager build are you using? Is this the .NET edition? What Outlook bitness do you use?

Regards from Poland (CEST),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 15 Aug, 2022 05:58:09 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
Joined: 2006-05-11
I should have added I suppose the issue is in the Security Manager and the issue is caused by this Outlook build. This is why we need to have details about Security Manager and Outlook.

Regards from Poland (CEST),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 15 Aug, 2022 06:08:19 Top
Peter Shadbolt




Posts: 8
Joined: 2022-08-14
Hi Andrei,

We are using the ActiveX Edition of Outlook Security Manager, release dated 4 Nov 2021 (verision 10.0.1400).

And the 32bit version of Outlook.

Regards,
Peter
Posted 15 Aug, 2022 14:46:28 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Peter,

Thank you for these details. Our guys are looking into this. I expect to get news tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Regards from Poland (CEST),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 16 Aug, 2022 05:43:58 Top
Peter Shadbolt




Posts: 8
Joined: 2022-08-14
Hi Andrei,

Any progress or update on this issue?

Many thanks,
Peter
Posted 21 Aug, 2022 16:18:19 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Peter,

I'm sorry for the delay. Our first attempt to fix this issue failed: it doesn't work for me so we are still looking into this.

Regards from Poland (CEST),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 22 Aug, 2022 06:37:19 Top
Peter Shadbolt




Posts: 8
Joined: 2022-08-14
Thanks for the update Andrei. It is appreciated.

Regards
Peter.
Posted 22 Aug, 2022 14:50:44 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Peter,

Terribly sorry for bringing bad news. The issue isn't reproducible on a test machine so we are creating a new environment. Obviously, pinning the issue down may take a while.

Regards from Poland (CEST),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 25 Aug, 2022 10:45:49 Top
Peter Shadbolt




Posts: 8
Joined: 2022-08-14
Thanks for the update Andrei.

We first encountered it on a client's Windows 2012 Server installation and then reproduced in our test environment using a Windows 10 Pro PC.
Posted 25 Aug, 2022 15:19:47 Top