How To Keep Things Secure:

All print devices form part of a huge patchwork of machines that make up the so-called ‘Internet of Things’. Every one of them – from Fitbits to iPhones and even connected light bulbs and smart energy meters – is potentially susceptible to cyber-attack. This includes your printer and often we overlook how to keep things secure.

Perhaps you are thinking: “Nobody wants to hack into my printer…” If so, you aren’t seeing the big picture. Instead, you should be asking: “Would anybody want to damage or steal from my company?” Print devices handle sensitive information every day, so ensuring they remain secured against common cyber threats is vitally important, not just to prevent data breaches but also to maintain compliance with legally-mandated data protection standards.

You also need to consider that MFPs aren’t necessarily the end-game for cyber bad guys – they are the ‘back door’. In other words, when cybercriminals look for weak spots in a company network, they often find networked devices such as printers that they can exploit as the way in.

And it isn’t just hackers that organizations need to worry about, there is the ever-present threat of online viruses and other forms of malware to contend with too. The unfortunate reality is that even those organizations with a good grasp of all the security challenges facing their print estates have a hard job knowing how secure each device currently is.

Risks:

To mitigate the risks of these threats and attacks, KYOCERA has developed a new HyPAS business application called KYOCERA SecureAudit. KYOCERA SecureAudit helps organizations quickly and easily check the security of their MFPs, enabling them to make informed decisions on which devices are potentially vulnerable and why.

KYOCERA SecureAudit works by interrogating each device’s status against a range of security -benchmarked criteria, providing managers with instant visibility into each setting in the form of a full diagnostic report. Checked criteria include open ports, protocols, admin passwords, authenticated user accounts, job boxes, installed apps, USB status and more.

The result is a simple, user-friendly view of actionable intelligence that can be used to feed into the organization’s wider preventative strategy for data security and compliance.

Smart, software-integrated, networked print devices drive business agility into your organization. Unfortunately, their value makes them a potential target for marauding viruses, rogue employees and cybercriminal intruders.

Please contact us if you are concerned and would like to learn more about KYOCERA SecureAudit and other measures recommended by KYOCERA to keep your print and data assets protected.