Microsoft announced antivirus for Microsoft Office

Microsoft recently announced that Office 365 applications support the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) feature, thus enabling virus protection mechanisms to detect and block malicious macros.

Infected macros have long been one of the biggest threats to Microsoft Office users. The company says this new feature will help protect users when working online with documents.

The biggest advantage of AMSI is that it is an open interface that can work with almost any antivirus program, so by default it has Windows Defender support and is also supported by third-party products.

AMSI is already integrated in Office 365, ie in applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Visio and Publisher. Note, however, that macros will not be scanned if your security settings are "Enable All Macros" and are listed as trusted or trusted locations.

Windows 10 and Windows Defender users benefit from additional protection thanks to the cloud-based mechanism that uses the built-in AMSI to determine if a macro is dangerous or not.

"When devices encounter documents with suspicious macro code, Windows Defender sends metadata and other machine learning features to the cloud, along with signals from Office AMSI. The results from machine learning translate into real-time protection for other Windows Defender clients, even if they have cloud protection enabled. notes Microsoft.

AMSI is a technology that was integrated into Windows 10 in 2015 to provide developers with an advanced method for detecting viruses for any data.