Let’s play a word-association game. When you hear the phrase “cybersecurity breach,” what comes to mind? An action hero infiltrating your server room with a utility belt full of spy tools? Or a room full of cyberpunk hackers with all the latest high-tech equipment mashing away on their keyboards, perhaps? This is what popular culture tells us hacking and security breaches look like. However, in the real world, it just doesn’t tend to work that way.

Now look over at the printer in your office. It’s just sitting there, innocently minding its own business. It certainly doesn’t look like a cyberthreat, does it? Unfortunately, the truth is your office printer poses a significant security risk. Here’s some food for thought.

1. Stored or Recently Printed Documents Are Ripe for Internal Theft

Did you know that on most multifunction printers, any user can look at the last 20 to 50 print jobs or so, and reprint them directly from the printer’s touchscreen? Many office dwellers don’t have a clue about this capability. If you’re printing sensitive information on a company printer, understand that without security measures in place, anyone in the company with access to that printer could, potentially, reprint those documents and use that confidential data for nefarious purposes.

This is a monumental problem if you’re dealing with sensitive customer or financial information, or you’re in an industry requiring regulatory compliance. If that’s the case, your IT department needs to make sure your printer is locked down to prevent this kind of access. Advanced printers will give administrators the ability to configure these settings.

2. Default Settings Are Easy to Hack

Too many networked office printers are installed utilizing the default settings. Were yours changed during printer installation? The problem with this is approach is it’s much easier for the bad guys to access devices left in default mode; these default settings are simply too easy to hack. Your networked printer acts like a computer hard drive, keeping a copy of recent documents it’s processed. If your printer retains its default settings, those documents are vulnerable significantly more vulnerable.

Don’t let your company succumb to a security breach because of your printers, of all things. If you’d like to learn more about securing your networked printers to mitigate security vulnerabilities, contact Golden Gate Office Solutions today.