How Vulnerable Are Your Documents?

Multi-Function Peripherals Are Often a Security Weakness

Today’s digital copiers and multi-function peripherals (MFP) contain a hard drive that is usually packed with corporate data. These MFPs are like other nodes on the network, but are often left under-protected, putting a massive amount of confidential information at risk. This is one of the least-understood corporate security issues, yet it can have significant business impact.

“The more integrated the MFP, the greater the risk to confidential information during a document’s life cycle when it is being copied, printed, scanned or faxed,” confirms Mike Marusic, Vice President, Marketing, Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America. If MFP security is breached, the fallout can lead to damaging lawsuits, loss of intellectual property and strategic plans, decreased productivity, compliance violations and other liabilities.

Lines of Defense

“The MFP is like the on-ramp and off-ramp between digital and paper, and at some point, no matter where it’s located, some confidential information is going to pass through it,” says Vince Jannelli, Sharp’s Associate Director, Applications. This means that social security numbers, paychecks, individual medical records, strategic plans, financials, intellectual property, customer data and other confidential information are all vulnerable to a malicious network attack, a disgruntled employee or electronic eavesdropping while they sit on an MFP’s hard drive.

A strong MFP security strategy requires a multilayered approach that deals with both internal and external threats:

Hard drive protection provides assurance of data confidentiality by encrypting and overwriting all the image data written to the hard drive.

Access control flexibly restricts access to hard copy and the device itself, and ensures that data stays within the company.

Network security employs an intelligent network interface that can limit access to specific network devices by both IP/Mac address as well as by virtually any protocol or service port.

Are You at Risk?

You can assess the vulnerability of your documents by going to the National Vulnerability Database, where the National Institute of Standards and Technology has integrated all publicly available U.S. Government vulnerability intelligence (http://nvd.nist.gov).

“If you’re in charge of protecting a network, this is a great resource for independent reviews of and advice on security risks,” says Marusic. It’s notable that no Sharp document products have ever been listed here. Further, Sharp was the first MFP manufacturer to have achieved Common Criteria validation—the internationally recognized source for IT security. Sharp continues to have the highest validation of any MFP manufacturer.

Keep Documents Safe

Today’s organizations need to protect every step in the document life cycle, from the initial scan to final output and distribution. Jannelli underscores the simple (but not always obvious) imperative: “The MFP is a computing device, so there are methodologies with which to protect it, and it’s up to individual organizations to implement security measures on a scale appropriate to their business environment.”

Download additional information about protecting your documents at sharpusa.com/securityforbes.