Security breaches in the UK remain at historically high levels
Security breaches cost British businesses billions of pounds every year, for public sector organisations a major leak of sensitive information could prove even more devastating.
Latest surveys carried out by Infosecurity Europe and PwC have found that security breaches in the UK remain at historically high levels. Nowadays when people talk about leaks and data theft most we think of hackers stealing electronic data. However, organisations still need to be careful about leaving printed information lying around or making it easy for unauthorised personnel to print certain documents.
Everyday a range of sensitive information is printed, copied, scanned or sent electronically. Before this data reaches print it has to pass a range of security firewalls and barriers. But we question; how safe is this data once it is at the printer?
Print security has become even more important with the increase in remote working supported by wireless and “follow-me” printing. It can be difficult to control printer usage if it’s not clear who has access to which devices.
Safe printing today involves securing the network so that there’s no chance of unauthorised users printing documents they shouldn’t or changing a printer’s settings, as well as ensuring that print jobs are protected at the printer.
Some printers offer secure network settings such as transport layer security (TLS) and secure sockets layer (SSL). There are also solutions to eliminate unauthorised printing by restricting access to a limited range of PCs and disabling unused protocols and network ports.
But we think it is also vital that print jobs are protected at the printer. Some printers enable users to store documents prior to printing on the printer’s hard disk drive or secure data card. This solution helps to ensure that sensitive data is protected; users can only access content after entering a pin or password and once printed, the document is automatically deleted from the system.
Many printers also feature ‘scan to email’ which converts a scanned image to a PDF so it can be emailed directly to someone’s inbox. If a document is very sensitive, some printers enable the encryption of these PDFs so that they can only be opened with a password.
We hold the view that for someone to leak information it takes a motive as well as an opportunity. By putting the right technology in place to ensure sensitive documents remain confidential, organisations can block this opportunity at source.