Once upon a time, we didn’t even think about securing the information on our printers. Oh, certainly we didn’t want someone on the help desk printing out a Dilbert cartoon on the executive suite’s prize color laser printer, but making sure no one could read a recently printed document from the printer’s own queue? Why bother?
That was then. This is now.
Today, as Mike Howard, Worldwide Security Leader for Managed Enterprise Solutions at HP, recently said, our “printers are essentially servers and they need to be treated and protected as such.”
It’s not just printers, though. Modern office copiers and multi-function peripherals (MFP) also keep documents, names, email addresses, and fax numbers on their hard drives. That means such data has to be protected to keep your company’s data safe.
Furthermore, you may be legally obligated to make sure no hackers get into your printer or other hard copy device (HCD) storage.
The list of laws that require you to keep your HCD’s documents safe from hackers goes on and on. A short list includes the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Common Criteria, and Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX).