CAN PRINTERS BE A
SECURITY SOLUTION
OR ARE THEY JUST ANOTHER POINT
OF VULNERABILITY?
David Barnes, Head of Regional Printing Product Management
and Business Development, EMEA, Zebra Technologies, says
it is vital organisations implement printers that can support
staff to maintain the most up-to-date security protocols,
making it easy to remotely manage, troubleshoot and
configure fleets of printers from a single location.
I
n today’s digital
age, everything
from coffee
makers to
cars are now
vulnerable to
hacks. It may be
surprising how a printer – with a main
output of sensitive data – could be
seen as a security solution, rather than
being simply a device protected against
security threats. It’s easy to imagine that you might print
something that contains sensitive data
on a printer accessible to everyone
in the office and then it might take a
few minutes to retrieve those papers.
Perhaps a colleague stops you for a
chat on the way to the printer. Or you
might want to submit multiple print jobs
at once, meaning you are still sitting at
a desk initiating those requests while
the papers – full of sensitive data – are
sitting in the printer tray.
A recent global printing study from
Smithers found that printing volumes
for businesses are forecast to run
49.5 trillion sheets between 2019
and 2024. These businesses include
hospitals, factories, grocery stores and
warehouses where people are coming
and going all the time. Anyone within the building could walk
up and take those pages off the printer.
Assuming the papers were picked up by
accident, most people might not put them
back or try to track down the owner and
might potentially discard them in an open
rubbish bin without giving any attention to
their sensitive nature.
It’s not unusual for workplaces such
as these to have papers lying around
to be easily seen, such as inventory
and pricing lists, personnel or sensitive
customer and patient information. It is hard to predict, much less
completely control, how people are
going to handle printed sources of
sensitive information, whether it is a
piece of paper, an ID or credit card, an
74
David Barnes, Head of Regional Printing
Product Management and Business
Development, EMEA, Zebra Technologies
Businesses should
not have to worry
about security when
adding a new device
or printer to their
networks.
RFID label or a patient ID wristband.
Even if you implement strict policies
governing workers’ retrieval and handling
of printed assets, it’s unfair to assume
that those processes will be followed
with 100% precision every day.
After all, isn’t that why we were so
eager to digitalise everything, to try
Issue 22
|
www.intelligentciso.com