Hackers, Hackers, Everywhere!
In March 2022, a few weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military invasion of Ukraine, members of the Anonymous hacking collective targeted printers across Russian cities. Anonymous used this breach to print antiwar messages and instructions on how to get around internet censorship. According to a report published by Time magazine, it took a couple of hours for the hackers to take over 156 printers, which delivered more than 100,000 pages of information about the Kremlin’s true intentions in Ukraine.
Hacker groups like to test themselves and gain notoriety by infiltrating security. When a group gets good at it, they will sometimes be recruited by governments to hack foreign businesses, with the purpose of bringing in money through ransomware.
Defeating printer security is an entire subset within the underground hacking community. Several attacks can be launched against printers. The most common involves taking control of the device in order to print specific materials as described in the Anonymous hack above, but more sophisticated incidents involve theft of sensitive information stored in the printer’s memory.
The More Endpoints, The Easier to Hack
Modern office printers are meant to be highly versatile; we want them to be packed with features such as wireless printing, Bluetooth functionality, network connectivity, remote management, cloud printing, and internal data storage. Hackers also want to see these features in the printers they target, because such extras give them more options to breach security. Needless to say, this presents a problem for Madison companies that print, copy, and scan sensitive information at the office.
Law firms, clinics, providers of physical security services, publishers, business consultancies, and private schools are among the businesses that should look for secure printing as the main feature of the printers they use. Sensitive data is not limited to client information; correspondence, legal documents, and intellectual property in digital formats are also highly sought-after by cybercrime groups.
Kyocera Stands Above The Rest In Security
The Kyocera brand of office printers is regarded as one of the best in terms of secure printing features. During a recent business conference, Kyocera representatives proudly announced that their K-Level security firmware, which is installed on Evolution Series printers such as the TASKalfa 3554ci, has obtained the coveted Keypoint Intelligence Security Validation Testing certificate. What this means is that the information security specialists at Keypoint tried every known exploit to breach the printer, but they were not able to.
IT security experts often say that the best approach to handling confidential and sensitive information is to not print, copy, or scan it at all; however, we know that this is not always possible. The best approach is to use trusted devices such as Kyocera printers equipped with the K-Level security firmware; this is particularly the case with multifunction printers that often feature larger memory drives to store more digital documents and images.
Madison Copier is a proud carrier of Kyocera devices with K-Level Security. If you would like to learn more about our Kyocera copiers and printers, call us today!