The applications built-in Malware Agent must be disabled.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-221270	SRG-APP-000278	EX16-ED-003010	SV-221270r961194_rule	2024-12-06	2

Description
Malicious code protection mechanisms include, but are not limited, to, anti-virus and malware detection software. In order to minimize potential negative impact to the organization that can be caused by malicious code, it is imperative that malicious code is identified and eradicated. Malicious code includes viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware. It is not enough to simply have the software installed; this software must periodically scan the system to search for malware on an organization-defined frequency. Exchange's built-in Malware Agent is not designed to address all malicious code protection workloads. This workload is best handled by third-party anti-virus and intrusion prevention software. Site must utilize an approved DoD scanner. Exchange Malware software has a limited scanning capability and does not scan files that are downloaded, opened, or executed.

Description

Malicious code protection mechanisms include, but are not limited, to, anti-virus and malware detection software. In order to minimize potential negative impact to the organization that can be caused by malicious code, it is imperative that malicious code is identified and eradicated. Malicious code includes viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware. It is not enough to simply have the software installed; this software must periodically scan the system to search for malware on an organization-defined frequency. Exchange's built-in Malware Agent is not designed to address all malicious code protection workloads. This workload is best handled by third-party anti-virus and intrusion prevention software. Site must utilize an approved DoD scanner. Exchange Malware software has a limited scanning capability and does not scan files that are downloaded, opened, or executed.

ℹ️ Check
Open the Exchange Management Shell and enter the following command: Get-TransportAgent "Malware Agent" If the value of "Enabled" is set to "True", this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Open the Exchange Management Shell and enter the following command: & env:ExchangeInstallPath\Scripts\Disable-Antimalwarescanning.ps1