Month: April 2019

How important is your company’s data (customer information, intellectual property, employee information, etc.)? If you could easily secure that information with a cost-effective solution, would you?

We are often talking about the cybercrime and theft of company information through the world wide web. There is another side to protecting your data internally. Most employees will do the right thing, but some of the biggest challenges are from internal information leaks or theft. One of our financial clients recently successfully stopped an employee who had resigned and then tried to steal intellectual property and a customer list. They were able to catch this and take action with the help of a software solution that we architected and implemented for them. We also manage and support the software solution for them to ensure it is always running and ready for the next issue.

The fact is that paper can’t report unauthorized access if an employee or visitor has access to sensitive information and they print, copy or take a picture of it they can typically take that information out of the office and it’s gone. Some solutions track what document are being printed by the name of the document; this easily can be changed.  Securing your print devices with Secure Access software ensures nothing is printed without the owner of the document being at the device to retrieve it.  But how do you know if sensitive information was printed, scanned or copied?

Data loss detection (DLD) – identifying the transfer of sensitive data

Data loss prevention (DLP) – ensuring sensitive or critical information does not get shared

Here’s how a simple Data Loss Prevention and Detection system can work.

With SmartPrint recommended solutions, at the print stream level: 

Monitor and secure paper documents to prevent the loss of valuable or confidential information. Dynamically discover, monitor and protect documents and print jobs in motion or at rest, throughout the printing process to mitigate data loss of sensitive information.

Simplified Paper Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Discover – analyze meta data of documents and print jobs to discover sensitive information, using dictionary and pattern matching content analysis

                      Monitor – transparent monitoring avoids user interaction, enforcing compliance and enabling auditing and                reporting

                     Prevent – stop printing of restricted documents to stop breaches before they happen, with the ability to notify or archive content where required.

This covers the printed document but how do you ensure confidential information is not copied or scanned?

We recently deployed and integrated a system, using HP Enterprise Multi-function print devices because of their open architecture and self healing security capabilities, securing access of the users by having them tap their security badge to use any of the capabilities of the multi-function devices, even to make a simple copy. If a user needs to make a copy, they tap their badge, which authenticates them against active directory. The system does a real time scan of the document and looks for key words or document numbers that are logged in the DLD system.  If the system detects an issue IT Security is automatically notified and can act.  

If locking down your intellectual property is important, reach out to get in touch with an MPS Consultant who can help you learn more.

Security is top of mind for IT departments in Canada for good reason. We had recently supported a situation where a client had escalated a service issue because of multiple service calls on a single print device. In this case, we found that a new HP Enterprise MFP that had recently been installed was in a constant reboot cycle, at some points of the day users could print to it, at other times it would constantly reboot on its own. Our client’s IT team thought that the device had a serious issue with the firmware or internal system because it was a new device. After further investigation, we found that a hacker had targeted the devices IP with a denial-of-service (DoS) attack which is an attack designed to bring a network to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. Their standard device configuration left some holes that we helped them close, and the problem was gone.

We had another client that had an older large workgroup multi-function print device that seemed to be running slow on the network, taking forever to wake up for users to scan or copy and printing slow, which of course was frustrating the users. After some testing, we found there was malware loaded onto the hard drive of the device waiting to exploit or possibly shut down their network. The cybercriminal had most likely already done some damage or stolen some information. Many Canadian companies have been targeted by malware that locks down their network and the only way to get it back is to pay a hefty ransom to cybercriminals.

We can’t stress enough that it’s time to take a serious look at your print infrastructure, the security capabilities of your current print devices and firmware and how to manage the environment moving forward to stay current on the best.

We have helped many of our clients upgrade their equipment to HP Enterprise print devices that can protect themselves against cyber attacks, and we have layered on HP JetAdvantage Security Manager as the print security console to manage device configurations and reporting. Watch this quick video to see an overview of the self-healing security features. Even with the investment in hardware and software to mitigate risk the business case from their current state costs to the future state has always been positive. More security protection with a lower cost of operation and better user experience is great management win.

Reach out for a free print fleet assessment and we will educate you on your risk and provide a simple plan to close the gap. With your MPS experts at your side, updating and securing the print infrastructure can all be accomplished with a simple as a service model, leaving your IT team to focus on other critical areas of the organization.

Is it time to look at investing in your print environment to protect your business?

Here are six questions to think about:

1. Does it matter that you have print devices on your network that are more than 7 or 8 years old?
2. Are all manufacturers the same when it comes to security?
3. How important is it to have hardened print endpoints to protect your organization from cybercrime and ransomware?
4. Are your data and intellectual property safe?
5. Do you know the gaps/risks of your print environments current state?
6. How much would you have to invest, or would you actually save money if you closed the risk gap of your print environment?

Print security is a bit of a murky space and frankly, most manufacturers will tell you they have it covered, and you have nothing to worry about. We’ll try and provide some of the answers and direction if protecting your company from cybercrime is important.

In this space, HP has recently been acknowledged as having the most secure print devices in the world. The industry analysts that we keep in touch with say they are well ahead of the rest and are continuing to increase their lead in technology. HP has technology in their enterprise level print devices to protect you below, at, and above the operating system so that hackers have no way in. They are focused on staying ahead of the game by providing software tools to automate locking down or hardening your print devices. The software also provides reporting which gives visibility to the potential areas of risk in your print infrastructure. This is really positive and helpful, but the fact is, if you have devices that don’t have the smarts in them (old print/copy devices, some brands of hardware) on your network, you may have some serious openings that put your organization at risk.

Without closing all the ports and protocols that aren’t required and consistently keeping the firmware up to date with the latest patches, you may be at risk.

Many organizations we talk to think that they won’t be a target of cybercrime and ransomware. We hear things like, “Why would we be a target?; Our data isn’t that important”.

The reality of the situation is that what we’re talking about here is cheap. It doesn’t even have to be a capital investment! Protect your company’s data and ensure that malware or ransomware doesn’t shut the doors of your business. I’m not trying to scare you here but many companies that get attacked and lose their data and systems can’t come back from a full shutdown fast enough and are at risk of going out of business or taking a major hit to their financials. Again, the opportunity cost of not future proofing your print infrastructure may save you money from your current state, and the opportunity cost of doing nothing could be significant. Further, according to IBM Security and Ponemon Institute in the 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study: Canada, for 27 Canadian companies that participated in the study incurred an average total loss of $5.78 million.

Reach out for a free print fleet assessment and we will educate you on your risk and provide a simple plan to close the gap. With your MPS experts at your side, updating and securing the print infrastructure can all be accomplished with a simple as a service model, leaving your IT team to focus on other critical areas of the organization.

Request your no-obligation print infrastructure security assessment