Assess your hybrid office for effective print security

The need for printer security has waned during the remote work era, but as more employees return to the office, consider reviewing your fleet and how you’re managing it.

Protecting hard copies is especially important today given privacy legislation and other regulatory frameworks that outline how businesses must handle Personally Identifiable Information (PII), which is subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Just as critical is that your employees may be printing sensitive business information, including financial data or other proprietary intellectual property that gives you competitive advantage in your industry. Many security teams today are more focused on making sure data doesn’t leak through corporate firewalls or via a remote worker, but with office life returning to normal, corporate data can be compromised or stolen in hard copy.

A managed print services strategy contributes to better endpoint security and controls access to any printed materials, which have the same potential to lead to a security or compliance breach if the wrong person gets a hold of a stack of paper that contains sensitive information.

Older printers are holding you back

An assessment of your current print infrastructure will likely reveal there’s room for upgrades. Older, legacy print technology is not only a security threat, it’s also a barrier to productivity, collaboration, efficiency.

Older devices are likely to break down more frequently, which means you’re pulling IT resources away from strategic projects for frequent break / fix incidents such print jams and toner shortages. This impairs employee productivity, too, in the form of slower outputs in terms of pages per minute. Software compatibility issues are also amplified if your office workstations are being modernized at a faster pace. Older printers are also less energy efficiency and costing you more in electricity.

High electricity consumption also means your business isn’t as sustainable is it could be. Retiring your older printers as part of a managed print assessment can help you evaluate how much you really need to print and establish greener practices to reduce waste. A more modern, efficient printer fleet can reduce paper use and improve ink and toner management, which also contributes to sustainability, as modern toner cartridges can be recycled and turned into new ones, and overall consumption can be reduced.

People will always want to print

Even organizations that are aiming for a paperless office will always have some hard copy output – accounting for human behavior is an essential part of any managed print services strategy. As offices get busy again, there’s going to be the potential for the wrong person to grab documents from a printer they shouldn’t have and walk out the door with them. So long as people are inclined to print out information in hard copy, if only for their own personal convenience, there will be a need to secure paper documents.

In the meantime, legacy print technology is costing you more money than necessary by having an impact on your budget, efficiency, productivity, and sustainability, while also posing a security risk. Just as a leaked email or hacked database can put the future of a business in a severe jeopardy and disrupt operations, so too can a stolen printed document.

A managed print services strategy beginning with a thorough assessment bolsters your endpoint security with printed output in mind.

There are many ways artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning already impact cybersecurity. You can expect that trend to continue in 2024 – both as tools for data protection as well as a threat.

Balancing Cybersecurity Innovation Amid Evolving Threat Landscapes

Even as you implement AI and machine learning into your cybersecurity strategy through the adoption of tools like Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR), so are threat actors. They will continue to update and evolve their own methodologies and tools to compromise their targets by applying AI and machine learning to how they use ransomware, malware and deepfakes.

With small and medium-sized businesses just much at risk as their large enterprise counterparts, SMBs must take advantage of AI and machine learning as mush possible. AI-directed attacks are expected to rise in 2024 in the form of deepfake technologies that make phishing and impersonation more effective, as well as evolving ransomware and malware.

Deepfake social engineering techniques

Deepfake technologies that leverage AI are especially worrisome, as they can create fake content that spurs employees and organizations to work against their best interests. Hackers can use deepfakes to create massive changes with serious financial consequences, including altering stock prices.

Deepfake social engineering techniques will only improve with the use of AI, increasing the likelihood of data breaches through unauthorized access to systems and more authentic looking phishing messages that are more personalized, and hence, more effective.

Countering Cyber Threats and Harnessing Innovation in 2024

If hackers are keen on leveraging AI and machine learning to defeat your cybersecurity, you must be ready to combat them in equal measure – just as AI and machine learning will create new challenges in 2024, they can also help you bolster your cybersecurity. While regulations are being developed to foster ethical use of AI, threat actors are not likely to follow them.

AI will also affect your cyber insurance as your providers will use it to assess your resilience against cyberattacks and adjust your premium payments accordingly. AI presents an opportunity for you to improve your cybersecurity to keep those insurance costs under control.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of doom being predicted around the growing use of AI and machine learning. And while it does pose a risk to your organization and its sensitive data, you can use it to bolster your cybersecurity even as threat actors leverage AI to up the ante. A managed service provider with a focus on security can help you use AI and machine learning to protect your organization as we head into 2024.

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