The companies’ digital domain is constantly expanding and developing based on working methods and behaviours.
Employees now have more flexible access to company systems, making visibility a key issue as data extends beyond traditional security boundaries and across all types of personal devices.
This change means that security must be strengthened at every point in an organization’s infrastructure. Printing, which does not appear to pose a threat, is still often overlooked in this table, with 56% of businesses reporting at least one data loss due to printers in the past year.
Even as cybersecurity becomes more sophisticated, one principle remains: an attacker only needs one weak link to gain access to an entire system.
To ensure that vulnerabilities do not become public, organizations must step up their game and prioritize the right hardware and software that work together intuitively, without losing sight of how they fit into the bigger picture.
Only in this way can companies provide IT security teams with greater visibility, control and, most importantly, security when they need it most.
An open door for hackers
Printers are the center of an organization’s information flow, but they are also endpoints: individual devices that can act as an entry point for malicious actors.
From a business perspective, failing to secure your print infrastructure means leaving the back door wide open. Hackers gain a foothold through these open doors.
Today, more and more printers can connect to the internet, while research shows that 28% of organizations still consider secure printing in a remote environment to be their biggest security challenge.
With only 37% of IT leaders reporting that they have already implemented a Zero Trust architecture, it is clear that much work remains to be done to give organizations complete confidence in the security of their print infrastructure.
Printers are also unique because they sit between the physical and digital worlds. As information changes medium, the security risk increases as it passes through multiple potential points of interception.
Therefore, they must form a data fortress and act as a strong line of defense to protect system access and ensure overall information security.
Keep an eye on your surroundings
Perimeter security remains one of the biggest challenges facing organizations, but its impact is huge. If data security cannot be effectively monitored on all systems, it is difficult to apply appropriate security measures or optimize resources. Without a clear understanding of where data is stored and who has access to it, security policies are incomplete.
As more endpoints need to be monitored and data can flow more easily between networks and devices, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify vulnerabilities. The goals of security teams are constantly changing as future regulations, such as the European Cyber Resilence Act, increase reporting requirements for companies.
As a result, more and more time is spent addressing the visibility challenge.
In this sense, artificial intelligence opens up new possibilities. Instead of IT teams having to monitor everything, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to continuously evaluate the network the printer is connected to and configure optimal settings across the entire print infrastructure.
This not only frees up IT team resources by facilitating system monitoring to quickly identify and remediate vulnerabilities, but also scales systems to enable continued expansion.
With many new and evolving threats to monitor, security teams want the printing industry to work for itself, not against them. AI offers the ability to reduce pressure and provide robust, proactive perimeter security.
Implement a layer of defense
A resilient security strategy must be multi-layered. Only by looking at the big picture and how hardware and software work together seamlessly within the business system can multi-layered defense be achieved.
In the printing industry, for example, integrating identity-based printer access is a critical part of ensuring that all data entering printing systems is only seen by the right people, but it doesn’t go beyond that.
The intersection of data and system connectivity activities is critical to successfully identifying potential risks. This confirms that the employee is in the location when he/she is expected to access the printer.
This location data makes multi-factor authentication (MFA) smarter and provides additional protection against compromised credentials.
This approach transforms printer key authentication from a useful tool for printer users to a more comprehensive security measure that improves the security of the wider perimeter of the organization.
When advanced print security is integrated into systems to intelligently leverage broader business data, it can increase a company’s overall security and ensure that only the right people can access or share sensitive information.
Build your confidence by applying pressure
Print is a crucial part of cyber security and lies right on the border between the digital and physical worlds. As the number of endpoints increases and threats evolve, organizations cannot afford to create blind spots.
Ignoring print security leaves your entire organization open to cybercriminals looking for a vulnerability. By making pressure a central part of your perimeter strategy, you close off a proven path to attackers. Print security means business security.