Defender Application Guard for Office will soon be discontinued by Microsoft

Microsoft has stated that the Office version of Microsoft Defender Application Guard is no longer being updated

Defender for Endpoint attack surface reduction rules, Protected View, and Windows Defender Application Control are suggested as alternatives by Microsoft, which is discontinuing Defender Application Guard for Office and the Windows Security Isolation APIs. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 Apps are compatible with Application Guard for Office, a security tool designed for Windows 10 and Windows 11 Enterprise versions. By limiting files downloaded from untrusted sources, making sure they are opened in a safe sandbox, and blocking access to trustworthy resources on the user's device, its main goal is to counter potential attacks. After accessing downloaded documents in Office apps, these safe containers use hardware-based virtualization to protect the device from possible malware attacks.

Microsoft has stated that the Office version of Microsoft Defender Application Guard is no longer being updated and is being discontinued. Furthermore, it was added that this depreciation will include some APIs that are used by Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Office. Two years have passed since Redmond made Application Guard for Office available to all Microsoft 365 users with compatible subscriptions. Only companies with Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 Security licenses were able to access it when it was formally released in November 2019 as a part of a controlled preview.