Publish date: 13.03.23

While security awareness among organisations and users appears on the face of things to be at an all-time high, printers often remain neglected and overlooked by busy IT teams. They're still a surprisingly common gateway that hackers can easily use to break into your organisation’s network.

As demonstrated by a recent experiment – where online news outfit Cybernews hijacked close to 28,000 unsecured printers all over the world1 and forced them to print a version of an article that this post references – printers are still very much at risk.

Once cybercriminals get their hands on your printer, they can do all sorts of untoward and criminal things, including:

  • Accessing copies of sensitive or confidential documents stored on your printer’s hard drive or the wider network
  • Sending unauthorised print jobs
  • Launching DDoS attacks

Some of the most critical vulnerabilities are shown here below:

Fortunately, you can secure your printer against potential attacks by following a few simple steps. Here’s how.

Landscape supply The World’s Most Secure Printers with built in Wolf Security, which offer the following industry-leading features:

  1. Self-healing bios reboots

    If a compromised version of the BIOS is discovered during power-up, or when operational (via HP Whitelisting, Intrusion Detection or Connection Inspector), HP Sure Start restarts the printer with a safe ‘golden copy’ of the BIOS.

  2. HP Secure Print

    Print sensitive documents and release them on demand without security worries and reduce waste from accidental and forgotten print jobs. Cloud & on premises options.

  3. HP Security Manager

    HP Security Manager recognises security threats, alerts you automatically, and immediately initiates any security protocols that you’ve set in place. Also plug in option for SCCM.

  4. HP Original Supplies

    At every step of the design, supply chain, and production process for Original HP office cartridges, security is built-in with tamper-resist­ant chips, firmware and packaging.

These are just a few examples of how Landscape and HP can help secure you endpoint print devices. For further advice, please get in touch.

References
hijacked close to 28,000 unsecured printers all over the world