Copiers Northwest and BluZebra Technologies hosted a Lunch and Learn in Vancouver, Washington with HP onsite as their guest speaker. I had the opportunity to listen to what Lindsey Hearst, HP Print Security Advisor had to say. Here’s what I took from this educational session.
There’s a shift from attacking servers to attacking client endpoints. The MFP and the networked printers (client endpoints) have everything a PC or server has on it and more. So why do these systems continue to get implemented into customers location with no security measures in place? If MFP or printers are hacked, it’s not just the documents that are at risk, your entire organization is. Our news is filled with stories on printers being hacked.
In a recent Keypoint Intelligence study, we found that improving document security is still not as high of a priority across all business sizes. Although document security ranked first as a top priority for enterprise accounts, only 56% of those surveyed stated that it was a top priority. It was interesting to see that enterprise account respondents second priority was their ability to use mobile phones to scan hard copy documents (50%). It’s even scarier in smaller accounts since 40% said the ability to view documents on a smart phone was a higher priority than document security (38%). This indicates to us that the educational piece around security discussions between sales reps and customers is critical dialogue to have to protect your customers from risks of cyber-attacks and fraud along with the impact of legal, regulatory and industry standard compliance.
Have you seen the HP Wolf commercial? In the first few seconds it says, “there are hundreds of millions of business printers in the world and less than 2% of them are secure.” HP has a 20+ year history of working to drive new standards for security, staying ahead of sophisticated security threats for the new “Blended Reality” future. Security best practices start with secure device and device management services to harden devices and secure network connections. Other best practices include adding additional security layers based on custom risk assessment and security plans and overtime maintaining and evolving security efforts relative to the changing landscape. Attacks are becoming more sophisticated. Ignoring security puts the whole organization at risk. Protect. Detect. Recover.
Alan Gold, Director of Business Development Copiers Northwest, stated “Of course we are interested in selling printing solutions to our customers, but we are more interested in building a true partnership and that starts with education and training. These “lunch & learns” are a way to expose our customers to subject matter expertise in the area of network security and revolutionary technology from our strategic partner HP. The next one is scheduled in Tacoma Washington on April 26th.”
Lindsey Hearst, HP Print Security Advisor wraps this up with a final important comment: “Every endpoint purchase is a security decision.”
For more information on HP network printer security watch the following video series:
The Wolf link: https://youtu.be/U3QXMMV-Srs
