Considering the significant effort and sums of money spent on securing information technology (IT) networks and operating systems, it's ironic that so little attention is paid to securing output devices like printers, copiers, fax machines, and scanners – where the information in the systems becomes very public.
In all sizes of business, up to 30% of all print jobs are never collected from the machine. So, highly sensitive information in the printed documents is visible to anyone who comes to the machine, or if the documents are thrown in the bin, to the world at large. There's wastage in terms of ink, paper, and electricity usage, too, of course.
But, whether the issue is cost or unauthorised exposure of data, lack of security around output devices constitutes a considerable risk to the organisation.
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