Oftentimes, managers and business owners forget about their office printers and the security risks. However, the fact is that tons of sensitive information and documents are being sent to your printer every day. In this day and age, printers are becoming more and more sophisticated and connected. This unfortunately means that they are becoming an easier target for hackers. If you do not want to risk the success of your company, you should invest in proper IT infrastructure to prevent the case of a security breach. Below are some tips on how you can properly secure your office printers.
Investing in Printer Security
What you can do to start improving your printer security is to integrate all the printers in your office into the standard security controls and procedures that are used by your business. Remember not to leave out any printer in the office. Once you have done this, proceed to switch the password and implement access restriction to trusted IPs by utilizing a firewall. Printing should also only be available to trusted registered users on your local office network.
Taking Your Printers Offline
If you have a new printer in your office, chances are that it will come with several security features. However, if your printer is old and not updated, the best thing you can do is to take the printer offline. This means that you will store data in USB drives in order to print. Note that this should be the last option but it might be your only choice for some printers. The bad thing about this is that you might not be able to work remotely and edit documents from the comfort of your home.
Update Security
Another thing you can do is to patch your security firmware regularly. You should update your printers whenever there is a new patch because failing to do so could jeopardize the safety of all your data in the office. When you take the effort to make sure that your printers are up-to-date, you can keep your business protected from any security breaches.
Monitoring Usage of Printers
When ensuring the security of data, you have to monitor any activity across all your printers. This means paying attention to the users of the printers and the documents that are being printed. To do this, you can rely on third-party auditing applications. These applications can track all the users and user activity so that you know whatever is happening on your network. As a manager, you also have a duty to educate the users on how to maintain a good level of print security.
Vulnerability Assessments
Prevention is always better than a cure. If you truly want to protect your network, what you should do is try to catch any hacker activity before the security of your network gets compromised. This can be done by using vulnerability assessments. These assessments help you to discover the weak links in your system before the hackers can do so.
