Harry Waldron - Corporate IT Security

  PC Magazine reports on improved security in Office 2010, where it will integrate DEP protective controls that can prohibit certain malware attacks. This can improve malware protection, when malicious scripts are launched in early attacks and vendors may not have AV signatures available

Office 2010 - Data Execution Prevention (DEP) by Default
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2010/02/office_2010_opts_in_to_dep_by.php

Office 2010 - In Depth Article on DEP Protection
http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/02/04/data-excecution-prevention-in-office-2010.aspx

QUOTE: Microsoft Office 2010 will, by default, opt in to DEP (Data Execution Prevention), a feature of recent versions of Windows that helps to prevent vulnerability exploits.  DEP causes a program to halt when an attempt is made to execute code in an area of memory marked as data. This is a common technique for exploits, including many that have used malicious Office documents over the years.

WHAT IS Data Execution Prevention (DEP)?
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/875352

QUOTE: Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system. In Microsoft Windows XP, DEP is enforced by hardware and by software.

Office 2010 Beta is available for testing at:

Microsoft Office 2010 - Home Page
http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx