The company’s technical director, Nigel Thorpe, describes printing as a “blind spot” when it comes to security and says that printers are often given a low priority when it comes to security risks.

However, he says: “Aside from the obvious risk of someone picking up a sensitive hard document from a shared printer, printers that are connected to the internet can provide a backdoor into the corporate network. However, awareness of the risks is increasing.”

Thorpe’s statements are backed by data and according to a survey by Quocirca, print was considered to be one of the top security risks to any organisation with 66% of respondents ranking it in their top five risks, next to cloud-based services which was ranked 69%.

Whilst many print manufacturers have developed print solutions that incorporate security within the printer, Thorpe warns that as the production of sensitive documents involves many stages, the risk of data being shared still remains present.

“This distributed and collaborative environment presents a considerable attack surface to protect from multiple attack vectors such as phishing and social engineering or compromised user accounts,” he says, adding: “Not forgetting the disgruntled or financially motivated employee who may steal content directly.” 

Offering a solution, Thorpe says printers must rethink traditional ‘castle and moat’ methods of protection and adopt a data centric approach where security is built into data itself.

Whilst many sensitive shared documents are protected by encryption, Thorpe also raises the issue of full disk encryption only protecting data when it is “at rest” and not whilst in transit, copied, in use, on site, or in the cloud.

However, in response to this, Thorpe says that advances in technology and fast processing speeds now mean that seamless data encryption can be used to protect all data, structured and unstructured, from creation to archiving and destruction.

He continues: “This way, stolen information remains protected and useless to cyber criminals or those intent on industrial espionage. This is particularly beneficial with the rise in ransomware attacks.

“Traditional printing is having a resurgence and while the idea of the paperless office is still largely a vision, there are some documents that will always need to be produced as hard copies – at least for the foreseeable future.

"So, it’s time that organisations from financial institutions and law firms to managed print providers review their security posture and consider the benefits of encrypting data rather than simply trying to prevent access to it if they don’t want to make headlines for the wrong reasons.”

If you have any news, please email carys@linkpublishing.co.uk or join in with the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn.