Sharp Europe Announces New Complete Print Security Service

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In what was great timing for October’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Sharp Europe recently held an analyst event where the company announced a focus on helping SMBs improve their security. 

Joe Tomota, President of Sharp Europe, opened with a celebration of Sharp’s 111th anniversary as well as an overview of group performance and future direction. Sharp has seen a net sales increase between FY19 and FY22, and it had expectations of remaining on track for Q1 2023. The mid-term B2B vision is for Sharp to be the technology service provider for the future workplace and public space for the three pillars of MFPs, IT services, and displays. The environment will be another pillar that Sharp will address in the next couple of years, with products such as air purifiers and solar panels gaining a B2B focus.

Angela Woodward, European PR Manager, then shared research findings from a survey on IT services as well as IT and print security to understand SMB customer thinking, challenges, and strategies. The survey findings from 3,700 SMB customer respondents from 11 countries showed that:

• 33% of SMBs had a cybersecurity breach in the last 12 months
• 37% were more worried about threats than a year ago
• 68% of respondents lack confidence to deal with cyber threats, with increased concerns from hybrid working and “bring your own device” (BYOD) approaches
• 33% of SMBs have no measures to cover printers, with one in five impacted by a printer security breach

Ben Lake, Senior Product Manager, highlighted hardware security features offered by Sharp to minimize vulnerabilities—including the previously announced optional Bitdefender virus detection kit that is available for Sharp BP series A3 MFPs as well as the most recently launched A4 devices (BP-B537WR and BP-B547WD).

One of the key announcements of the day was introduced by Rob Davis, Solutions and Services Business Manager, for the launch of a new turnkey IT security subscription service in partnership with ConnectWise. Complete Print Security (CPS) is a fully managed service offered directly from Sharp that responds to the identified security concerns and challenges for SMBs.

The CPS offering aligns with the NIST Cybersecurity core principles:

• Identify: Consultative-led security survey identifies print security risks and creates a custom MFP security policy with over 150 settings that can be preconfigured on the devices prior to delivery
• Protect: Settings are monitored against the security policy using Sharp Remote Device Manager (SRDM); any changes trigger an alert and are automatically reset to ensure policy compliance
• Detect: Security information and event management (SIEM) technology and 24x7x365 monitoring
• Respond: Threats are assessed based on the severity and attack profile as well as action taken remotely to close out the threat
• Recover: Daily data backup to the ConnectWise cloud, including MFP settings, software, and configuration to enable recovery

It combines existing Sharp services and solutions with ConnectWise 24x7x365 SIEM monitoring to detect any potential cyber threats. Suspicious activity is alerted to Sharp’s 24/7, multilingual European Technology Solutions Centre (ETSC) based in Warsaw, which then investigates and takes the appropriate action to secure the MFP.

Keypoint Intelligence Opinion

Sharp Europe has adopted the NIST Cybersecurity principles across hardware, solutions, and services to develop a strong print security proposition. The launch of CPS, in partnership with ConnectWise, gives Sharp the opportunity to truly enhance print security for SMBs whose in-house expertise or resources are currently limited. This print security-as-a-service approach is a unique proposition in the market and Sharp is the only other print vendor in addition to Konica Minolta to offer the Bitdefender anti-virus software for their MFP device range.

CPS is currently offered direct from Sharp; there is an opportunity to consider extending to channel partners, which would be vital in providing enhanced security policies to the wider SMB market in today's complex and evolving threat landscape.

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