Both Application Hardening and Office Macros are items which exist more in your IT team’s world than average joe-user. However, we’re going to talk about them so you understand what’s going on when you can’t do something and your IT team tell you that they had to do this for Cybersecurity purposes.

Microsoft Office and other systems can run a thing called “Macros”. These are snippets of code which do a task on your behalf. For example, a macro could run through a whole lot of cells in a spreadsheet and do some custom processing. Unfortunately, a macro can also run through a bunch of files on your computer and load a keylogger which steals everything you type. Or upload the passwords you saved in your browser to their file server so they can break into your bank accounts. Macros were meant for good, but now they’re banned because of how bad they are!

Similarly, Application Hardening attempts to remove misused abilities from a program by disabling them. An example of this was Internet Explorer – it was able to do lots of things like offer your saved passwords to a hacker when they asked for them nicely! As a result, most systems disable or uninstall Internet Explorer. Java is another thing which is misused a lot. Many programs require Java to run, however when we allow websites to run a java program inside a web browser, or on the system, things can go very badly for the security of the system. So a good IT team disables this ability.

Lesson 5 and 6: Application Hardening and Office Macros

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