Microsoft: Office 2010 Is the Most Secure Version of Office Yet

Office 2010 is not only the fastest selling version of Office in history, but also the most secure iteration of the productivity suite yet, according to Microsoft.

The Redmond company has made available for download a whitepaper designed to detail the security features and enhancements packed into Office 2010.

The “Keeping Enterprise Data Safe with Office 2010” is offered through the Microsoft Download Center, and will help customers get insight into the security evolution of the latest version of the software giant’s productivity suite.

The whitepaper’s title is by no means a coincidence, as the company attempts to convince corporate customers that Office 2010 offers the best protection against exploits designed to target Office components.

“Office 2010 is the most secure version of Microsoft Office yet,” reads the company’s conclusion at the end of the whitepaper.

Fact is that as with additional products, the security evolution of Office is designed to get the productivity suite to keep up the pace with the ever-changing threat landscape.

In this sense, Microsoft built Office 2010 with strong focus on security from the early stages of development, kicking up a notch the Office security engineering processes, enhancing user protection technologies, and bulletproofing the product’s key security features.

Office 2010 comes with such security features as Office File Validation, Protected View, Trusted Documents, Data Execution Prevention, ActiveX kill bit, as well as enhancements to encryption and digital signatures.

“With an improved trust model that persists trust on a per-file basis and new technologies such as Office File Validation and Protected View, users are better protected against exploits that utilize Office documents as attack vectors,” Microsoft explains.

“In addition, under the hood improvements in encryption technologies, new digital signature capabilities and support for domain-based password complexity requirements enables users to secure their Office documents more effectively against tampering.

“And support for Data Execution Prevention adds an extra layer of defensive protection, which combined together with other Office security technologies ensures defense-in-depth protection for users who work with Office applications.”

Office Home and Business 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Home and Student 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Professional 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.