Canon highlights security risk of improperly configured printing solutions

The guide forms part of Canon’s ongoing strategy to highlight the importance of document security, to ensure customers minimise their risk of exposure.Despite organisations understanding the need to secure data stored on an MFD, it is often overlooked within an organisation’s overall security policy. However, with nearly a quarter of security breaches being paper-based it is vital organisations have a secure printing strategy in place. Canon is producing the series of ‘hardening guides’ to highlight common pitfalls and advise on best practice configuration options to help lower the risk of exposure to potential threats. The most common threat they face today being data leakage, through the copy and distribution of unauthorized documents.

The MFD guide has been produced in conjunction with security consultancy IOActive, following its vulnerability testing of Canon’s imageRUNNER ADVANCE series. The rigorous assessment recreated an external party with malicious intensions, attempting to gain access to the MFD to obtain unauthorised information. The results outline best practice configurations to prevent risk, taking into consideration regulatory and legislative requirements. The guide is part of Canon Europe’s ongoing security campaign, to highlight the importance of document security as part of an organisations overall policy. The aim is to ensure the MFD is a valuable asset in the battle to keep information safe, rather than a risk. The second guide in the series focuses on Canon’s uniFLOW 5.0 software, and will be published later this year.