Printer Security Tips to Protect Your Business

If you’re wanting to run a successful business, it’s likely that you will grow to be concerned about the protection that your internal devices have. Technology such as printers, mobile phones and computers all pose a risk of being hacked, leaving you with a chance of your sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.

However, your business can be protected from hacks from devices such as your printer if you secure the network and physical connections effectively. It will limit the chances of a data breach occurring, as well as your documents being eavesdropped-on by malicious hackers.

If you’re wanting to protect your business against printing hacks, here are some tips that you can use:

Why is printer security important?

As printers operate by receiving and creating physical copies of digital files, they have a variety of connectivity options; such as wireless or network cables. Overall, these connections are generally secure, but are easy for experienced hackers to manipulate and gain access to the machine.

If your printer has been the victim of a hack, they may be able to taint the data stored on your internal drive, and retrieve previous documents that have been sent to the machine. If the printer in your business is used regularly for printing sensitive information and contracts, this could pose a huge threat.

How to secure your printer

In order to effectively protect your printer from falling victim to these security breaches, you can use the following security tips:

Wireless protection

These days, many business technology devices will use wireless printing. They offer many benefits that a cable-network alternative can’t, but also run the risk of being hacked.

The chances of this occurring can be reduced significantly by regularly ensuring that the software in which your machine is using is up to date. Printing manufacturers will be constantly monitoring the most common hacks and releasing software that can prevent them, making your machine harder to break into.

If your printer is password protected, you may want to consider using a strong password that incorporates special characters, making it much more difficult to guess. You should also avoid using ‘admin’ or ‘administrator’ as your username or password.

You can also protect the machine wirelessly by opting for a printer that supports encrypted connections; a feature that allows the machine’s administrative panel to become more secure.

Physical security

If your machine is connected physically through a USB or network cable, it’s also important to implement security tips to protect the printer; despite it being more difficult to hack.

The most common way in which information is leaked through a cable-connected printer happens after the printing has taken place. Before leaving the machine, check that the document has fully completed printing in order to avoid the following user from seeing the file.

Consider locating your printer in a central area of the workplace where multiple employees have a view of it. This way, the monitoring of the printer can be completed and you will instantly notice any strange activity.

As you can see, there are many safety tips that can be implemented into your business to reduce the chances of the model being hacked and your data being breached.