For those who say, “print is dead,” a quick glance in any office proves just how wrong they are. Many business tasks require print in one form or another, and a modern multifunction printer continues to prove itself essential for office workflows.

However, the same multifunction printer faithfully serving your office needs can also be a glaring security risk if you’re not careful. Let’s take a deep dive into why multifunction printers pose such risks and how you can mitigate them with best practices.

Do Multifunction Printers Really Pose Data Security Threats?

The thought of something as seemingly simple as a printer posing a data security threat seems laughable at first. Until you realize that modern multifunction printers are just as technologically advanced and complex as most computers. Many even have hard drives and memory, just like desktop and laptop computers, allowing for some form of data storage or data retention ordinary printers often lack.

Networking adds another layer of vulnerability to an already vulnerable vector for security breaches, especially for multifunction printers with wireless connectivity enabled.

While most businesses take their cybersecurity seriously, multifunction printers often receive the least scrutiny despite being the most vulnerable device in the office. Threats and vulnerabilities for the average multifunction printer come in a wide variety of forms:

• Print job rerouting via unauthorized configuration changes
• Print job manipulation, including log deletion to cover one’s tracks
• Accessing print data from memory or from decommissioned hard drives
• Using the printer itself to attack other applications and/or systems
• Attacks via cloud printing infrastructure

Security risks can also come in low-tech forms. For instance, someone walking over to the printer and taking documents belonging to someone else without their knowledge or permission.

Basic Multifunction Printer Security Best Practices

Even if you view your multifunction printer as an overly complex piece of office equipment, protecting it against many security threats is surprisingly simple. Fortunately, there are plenty of basic best practices you can follow to protect your printer and its valuable data. Keep in mind that these security standards are the bare minimum for any business with networked multifunction printers:

• Change the default password. You’d be amazed at how many administrators fail to change the default password on their multifunction printers. It only takes a few clicks for anyone, hackers included, to pull up a list of default passwords for many office machines. Changing the password is not just the first essential step toward locking down your multifunction printer but also the best step for preventing security threats.

• Apply user restrictions. Giving your employees free access to your multifunction printer also means giving hackers and other malicious actors free access to your data. User access restrictions ensure that only those with the correct permissions for using your multifunction printer can use it. This also allows you to track usage on an around-the-clock basis.

• Update your printer’s software. Just as with most forms of modern technology, including your smartphone, multifunction printers need regular software and firmware updates to maintain overall performance. Regularly scheduled updates help close gaps in software or firmware and reduce overall network vulnerability. Skipping on certain updates or updating with outdated saves could leave your printer more vulnerable to data breaches.

Advanced—But Important—MFP Security Best Practices

The above steps are just the basics for protecting your multifunction printer and your office from malicious actors and equally malicious attacks. In addition to what you’ve seen so far, you can also take these best practices to strengthen your multifunction printer security and prevent breaches from happening:

• Encrypt the hard drive. Unless you do a thorough job of destroying your multifunction printer’s hard drive, chances are the data within remains easy to recover, especially if the hard drive is unencrypted. Hard drive encryption ensures that unauthorized users can’t simply read that data without a way to break the encryption, even if it’s removed from the machine. Some printers can be locked down using the hard drive’s own BIOS. Combined with hard drive password protection, hackers may find it easier to pick softer targets.

• Implement pull printing. This method keeps a print job on the server until the user releases the job at the multifunction printer itself. This prevents the risk of sensitive and/or confidential data falling into the wrong hands.

• Use auto-deletion to protect and clean up devices. Modern multifunction printers often save their work on a hard drive or within the cloud. Eventually, all of that data adds up, with messy user boxes potentially being Ground Zero for security breaches. With automatic data cleaning, you can clean up and dispose of historical printer jobs, giving your multifunction printer another security layer.

• Use automatic temporary image removal. It’s the same deal as above, except this time it involves temporary image files stored on the hard drive. These files can persist even after the original is deleted. This step ensures that hackers lack any easy access to your data.

Safeguarding your multifunction printer is no easy feat, especially when your printer is most likely one of the most networked devices in your office. If your Mill Creek business wants to beef up its printer security, contact Copiers Etcetera today and learn more from our top experts.