This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of HP MPS. All opinions are 100% mine.
Internet of Things security is garnering a lot of discussion after the Mirai botnet took down several popular websites by attacking their DNS providers. The Mirai botnet is composed of many IoT devices like security camera DVRs and routers that had default or hard-coded administrator accounts that were accessible from the web. With the new year, many IT Pros and businesses are making 2017 resolutions to improve IoT security and defend against these new and evolving threats.
Networked printers can often be overlooked for their security risks but they deserve to be included in your security evaluation across your organization. An attacker could target your printers with different goals in mind:
- Render the printer unusable
- Read documents with confidential employee or company data
- Move laterally from the printer to a different part of your network to compromise more infrastructure
Watch this animated video for more concerns and their statistics regarding printer security.
Back in July, I wrote about risks to printer security. In this article, I shared several categories of security from HP Secure Managed Print Services that need to be considered with printers. Trying to lock down your IoT devices but ignoring your networked printers would be leaving a gap in your defense-in-depth security strategy. As a side benefit of using managed services, the company IT staffis able to focus on the complex tasks that demand their time.
Trusting HP Secure Managed Print Services can safeguard against threats from the angles of device security, data security, and document security. This means addressing many print-related security breaches, such as:
- Malicious threat from outside the company
- Exposure of documents at the device
- Exposure of documents sent to/from the device
- Unauthorized use
- Exposure of device settings or ports
- Company’s ability to identify the culprit of a security breach
- Remote/home print users
Visit the HP Secure MPS site to learn more about this service. Improving the security of your organization might be one resolution you will be able to accomplish when you include the right partners.