Slowness when saving Microsoft Office documents - DLP 16.0 MP2 and earlier

Products

• Data Loss Prevention Core Package
• Data Loss Prevention
• Data Loss Prevention Endpoint Prevent

Issue/Introduction

Users experience significant slowness or delays when using the "Save As" functionality in Microsoft Office applications (Outlook, Word, Excel) on endpoints with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) agents 16.0 MP2 and earlier installed. This performance issue is often intermittent but resolves immediately if the DLP agent is uninstalled.

Symptoms

• Performance delays during "Save As" operations.
• Endpoint logs (EDPA) may contain the following error snippet:
  `CSTATUS : 0x80004005, Message : Failed to find backstage group control element` 

Environment

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Agent 16.0 MP2 and earlier (Note: DLP 16.0.x is End of Support)
• Microsoft Office 365

Cause

This issue occurs due to changes Microsoft introduced to the Backstage UI and Microsoft Office interface components. These updates break the UI traversal methods used by DLP agent versions prior to 16.0 RU1, causing the agent to hang while attempting to identify UI elements during the save process.

Resolution

While this fix was initially introduced in DLP 16.0 RU1, DLP version 16.0.x has reached End of Support (EOS). To resolve the issue in a supported environment, DLP systems must be upgraded to DLP 16.1 or higher.

Note:

It is not a supported configuration to run a newer DLP Agent with an older Enforce/Detection Servers.