Co-authoring is enabled for files encrypted with sensitivity labels

Overview

When co-authoring isn’t enabled for documents protected by sensitivity labels that apply encryption, only one person can edit the file at a time when they use Office desktop apps. As a result, this can slow down teams, which makes collaboration difficult and can delay project completion. This limitation is especially challenging for groups working on sensitive projects that require encryption for privacy but also need to work together efficiently.

Turning on co-authoring for files encrypted with sensitivity labels lets several authorized users edit the file at the same time in Office desktop apps. Unless you can ensure that all users edit these files by using Office for the web, this change removes the slowdown of requiring checkout and allows teams to efficiently collaborate without sacrificing security. The co-authoring setting might also be a requirement for other labeling features.

Remediation

• Enable co-authoring for files encrypted with sensitivity labels

Run it

The check runs as part of the whole assessment, with the ZeroTrustAssessment module installed:

Install-Module ZeroTrustAssessment -Scope CurrentUser
Connect-Maester
Invoke-Maester -Pack ZTA -SkipBuiltIn

Leave out -SkipBuiltIn to run Maester’s own checks in the same run.

About this check

Severity	Low
Effort to fix	Low
Impact on users	High
Pillar	Data
Category	Sensitivity Labels
Product	Purview
Feature	Information protection
Area	Data protection
Licence	RMS_S_PREMIUM2, Microsoft 365 E5
Tenant	Workforce

Product, feature, area and ATT&CK are Maester’s: the assessment does not record them, so Maester keeps them in the pack’s taxonomy.json.

A Microsoft check, part of the Zero Trust Assessment pack. Text from ZeroTrustAssessment 3.1.0, © Microsoft, MIT licence.