A recent CBS News report titled, "Your Office Copy Machine Might Digitally Store Thousands of Documents That Get Passed on at Resale," alerted the public to the fact that today's digital copiers and multi-function peripherals (MFPs) contain hard drives that store images of every document copied, scanned or emailed by the machine.
Peter Larsen has been in the document management industry for 13 years. He has provided multi-function copier solutions for Xerox Corporation and IKON Office Solutions prior to joining Cobb Technologies.
The report indicated that potentially private, sensitive data can be left on the hard drives of copiers after they are returned at the end of their lease period and that businesses and organizations need to be aware of the need to "wipe" the hard drives clean prior to returning the equipment.
But don't panic. Any reputable office technology dealer should take its clients' data security very seriously. That dealer should offer you several options to maintain security on existing devices or to utilize at the end of lease or reallocation of a copier or MFP device.
And basic automatic security measures on many multi-function copiers today occur when a print or scan job is sent to a device. The information is stored on the hard drive temporarily until another job overwrites that information with the digital information of the new job.
Other Options In addition to this basic process, copier technology also offers additional security measures and options for your multi-function devices that do store documents for printing at a later date:
**At the customer's request, a copier service technician can format a device's hard drive on-site which "wipes" clean the information stored on the hard drive. Be aware though, professional services fees may be charged by your copier provider to perform this service.
** However if you are upgrading to a new copier or MF, or are at the end of the lease term, your copier provider should reformat a device's hard drive at no additional fee prior to the equipment being removed from your site.
Take Control of Your Hard Drive A customer can further protect from possible data theft with the purchase of a new hard drive to replace the existing hard drive in a device they are returning. Your copier provider should perform the replacement and provide the customer with the old hard drive to dispose of accordingly.
Also, Canon, Konica Minolta and Kyocera all offer a separate security hard drive erase kit that allow continuous overwriting of information temporarily stored on the hard drive utilizing multiple layers (up to 3 times) so that the information is rendered indecipherable. Hard drive security kits can be easily installed on new and existing equipment by service technicians and cost approximately $400-$500.
A hard drive encryption kit adds an encryption key to the device that is necessary to unlock any data that is stored on the hard drive. If the key is not utilized, data on the hard drive is rendered indecipherable.
Regardless of which option a customer selects, the best protection against data theft is to prevent unauthorized access to all equipment capable of storing data digitally. This includes not only copiers and MFPs, but also personal computers, laptops, mobile "smart" phones, and digital telephone equipment. While no solution is completely foolproof all of the time, feel free to contact your copier provider's representative for more information regarding this subject.
