Along with the streamlined screen layout, the Microsoft Office 2007 system comes with some behind-the-scenes security measures in place to help protect your computer from threats.

What's new in Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

The latest version of Microsoft Office 2007 is Service Pack 2 (SP2). The service pack includes security improvements as well as performance, stability, and interoperability improvements for Microsoft Office.

If you have automatic updating turned on, then you probably already have SP2. If your computer doesn’t install updates for your operating system automatically, visit Microsoft Update to install Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office.

Note: As of August 1, 2009 Office Update will no longer be available. You can get all of your Microsoft Office and Windows operating system updates through Microsoft Update.

For more information, see Description of 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 SP2.

Get more protection from phishing scams in Microsoft Office documents

Phishing scams are fraudulent e-mail messages or fake Web sites designed to steal your identity. Scam artists "phish" in an attempt to persuade you to disclose sensitive information. If you click a suspicious link in a Microsoft Office document, the following alert appears.

Microsoft Office Security Notice

You can then choose whether to continue to visit the Web site. In this situation, we recommend that you click No. For more information, see Enable or disable security alerts about links to and files from suspicious Web sites.

Get more protection from phishing scams with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

By default, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 does the following to a suspicious message:

If a message meets the Junk E-mail Filter's definition of a phishing scheme, but not the definition of spam, the filter keeps the message in your Inbox, but disables any links in the message and prevents you from replying to that message.
If the message meets the Junk E-mail Filter's definition of both spam and a phishing scheme, Outlook 2007 sends the message to the Junk E-mail folder. Outlook converts all messages sent to the Junk E-mail folder to plain text format and disables all links in them. It also prevents you from replying to the message. The InfoBar alerts you to this change:

If you click a link that Outlook disabled in a phishing message, the following Outlook Security dialog box appears.

Microsoft Outlook security message

If you want to continue to receive messages that notify you about potential security risks, click OK.

Block potentially dangerous content in documents

To help protect your security and privacy, Microsoft Office blocks external content — such as images, linked media, hyperlinks, and data connections — in workbooks and presentations. External content is any content that is linked from the Internet or an intranet to a workbook or presentation.

Scam artists can use external content to steal your personal information or to run malicious code on your computer without your knowledge or consent.

If your workbook or presentation contains external content, when you try to open the file the Message Bar notifies you that the external content has been blocked. You will not be able to view or edit the content in your workbook or presentation.

Message Bar security alert

If you click Enable Content on the Message Bar, a security dialog box opens that gives you the option to unblock the external content.

You should only unblock the external content if you are sure that it is from a trustworthy source.

View your security settings in the Trust Center

The Trust Center is where you can modify security and privacy settings for many different features of Microsoft Office, including the following:

Very High, High, Medium, and Low security levels that were used in earlier versions of Microsoft Office applications are now replaced with a more streamlined security system.

The 2007 Microsoft Office System Trust Center