Connection verification of permissions must be enforced.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-238035	SRG-APP-000340	DTOO201	SV-238035r961353_rule	2024-12-06	2

Description
This policy setting controls whether users are required to connect to the Internet or a local network to have their licenses confirmed every time they attempt to open Excel workbooks, InfoPath forms or templates, Outlook e-mail messages, PowerPoint presentations, or Word documents that are protected by Information Rights Management (IRM). This policy is useful if you want to log the usage of files with restricted permissions on the server. If you enable this policy setting, users are required to connect to verify permissions. This policy setting will only affect protected files created on machines where the policy is enabled. If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, users are not required to connect to the network to verify permissions.

Description

This policy setting controls whether users are required to connect to the Internet or a local network to have their licenses confirmed every time they attempt to open Excel workbooks, InfoPath forms or templates, Outlook e-mail messages, PowerPoint presentations, or Word documents that are protected by Information Rights Management (IRM). This policy is useful if you want to log the usage of files with restricted permissions on the server. If you enable this policy setting, users are required to connect to verify permissions. This policy setting will only affect protected files created on machines where the policy is enabled. If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, users are not required to connect to the network to verify permissions.

ℹ️ Check
Verify the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2016 -> Manage Restricted Permissions "Always require users to connect to verify permission" is set to "Enabled". Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\common\drm Criteria: If the value RequireConnection is REG_DWORD = 1, this is not a finding.

ℹ️ Check

Verify the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2016 -> Manage Restricted Permissions "Always require users to connect to verify permission" is set to "Enabled". Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\common\drm Criteria: If the value RequireConnection is REG_DWORD = 1, this is not a finding.

✔️ Fix
Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2016 -> Manage Restricted Permissions "Always require users to connect to verify permission" to "Enabled".