• Type: CUSTOMER
• Severity:  WARNING
• Protection against: HUMAN ERROR
• CIS: M365 4.16 - (L2) Ensure that LinkedIn contact synchronization is disabled.
• FIX Available: YES

This Customer Check verifies if the synchronization of the address book with LinkedIn is blocked.

Why this check?

By default, it is possible for an employee to synchronize the entire Outlook contact list with LinkedIn. This can provide interesting insights about the contacts and is therefore quite popular for sales, marketing, and HR. However, technically, synchronization usually constitutes a data breach. After all, by synchronizing, you 'give' data to LinkedIn about your contacts - even those who do not have a LinkedIn account - while those contacts probably have not given you prior permission for this.

The advice is therefore to block synchronization for all employees. And to have them 'manually' search for their contacts on LinkedIn.

CIS Benchmarks

This measure is in line with the following item from the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark: 

• CIS M365 4.16 - (L2) Ensure that LinkedIn contact synchronization is disabled

What possible outcomes does the check have?

This check has two possible outcomes. In Attic, this is reflected as follows:

• Okay: LinkedIn synchronization is disabled
• Warning: LinkedIn synchronization is not yet disabled

How should this be followed up?

If the output is Warning, we advise disabling LinkedIn synchronization.

A Fix is available for this check, which we will offer through Attic.