Avoid a Data Breach: Secure Your Office Printers

A data breach is an ever-present, looming prospect for modern businesses everywhere. If you follow the news, chances are you’ve noticed that many companies have fallen victim to data breaches. But, did you know that your office printers provide hackers a way in to steal your business data? One way that you can avoid a data breach is by securing all network devices, including your copiers. Here are a few tips that will help you secure your office printers and reduce the likelihood of a data breach.

Secure Office Printers and Copiers

The first thing you should do is focus on physically securing your printer and copier fleet. Depending on the type of business that you are in, consider moving these devices to a controlled access area. You should disable all physical ports to make unauthorized use more difficult. You should also control access to checks and other pre-printed security paper.

Secure the Data

The next and most crucial step that you should take is to secure the data on your office printers. Data is particularly vulnerable when it is traveling through the network to the printer. Sensitive data is also vulnerable when it is sitting in the storage or memory of a printer.

Therefore, you should encrypt all your print jobs. That way, even if a print job is intercepted while traveling through the network, the sensitive information still will be protected. You should also use encrypted storage for your documents so that these documents are protected while waiting to be printed.

A document should not be stored on your printer after being printed out. In fact, it is best practice not to store any data about completed jobs on a printer or copier at all. However, ensuring stored data is encrypted on your device will help protect you in between wiping your printers’ hard drives.

Additional Print Security

For added security, consider activating pull or push printing, functionalities of rules-based printing. Chances are, there have been many times when you went to pick up a printout and discovered many documents sitting near the printer or in the printer tray. Anyone can view or take these documents. This is a security risk that you can minimize by activating pull or push printing. Doing so will reduce the number of unclaimed documents left on the output tray and increase security of hard copy printouts.

Wherever you’re working from, securing your office printer is essential if you don’t want your company to become the victim of a data breach.