There are numerous steps you can take to help eliminate the security risks that are posed by your printers.
• Keep a printers’ software up to date. Just like your computer, or any other network-enabled device, a printer has vulnerabilities, therefor there are often patches issued by their vendors or manufacturers. Search out and apply those patches.
• If possible, set up reporting features that record the user name, date and time for each print job to track this information for security purposes, as well as billing/accounting.
• If the printer is wireless, ensure that the wi-fi network is protected.
• Set all relevant permissions on your network printers to control the staff that may manage print jobs. Allowing everyone is never secure.
• If the printer has the ability, overwrite the data immediately after printing (or scanning, if it’s an all-in-one device).
• Enterprise printers allow the use of passwords, smart cards or other types of biometrics, in order to complete a print job. This also means that the user physically visits the printer when providing the authentication information and reduces the risk of an unattended document sitting in the output tray.
• If a printer includes a “reprint” function, turn in off in order to prevent others from reprinting a job after the user has picked up the printed document.
• If a printer allows you to bypass its internal hard drive and print directly from RAM, use this setting for enhanced security, because print jobs are not stored on the hard drive.
• If it does not, and you do store print jobs on the hard drive, ensure that the drive is encrypted.
For information on how Capital Business Systems can help you implement a secure printing environment to suit your business and your budget, please contact us.