The hidden backdoor that ciso's overlook
How safe is your business? Really? You may think you have your security locked down but in reality, your network is very likely to not have the protection it needs. There are hundreds of millions of business printers in the world. Less than 2% of them are secure1. Are yours?
Your printer could put your entire business at risk. Confidential data. Employee information. Everything. And all of it is vulnerable to a cyber attack, putting your entire organisation at risk. Hp’s series, The Wolf, is a great illustration of what can happen when your printers are not secure.
While fictional, the issues faced are very real. Traditional sources of hacking are often protected very well, but printers are commonly forgotten. In the clips featuring Christian Slater, there are a few examples of what can happen.
The first video shows Slater’s character hacking into a large financial corporation. His main access point – the printer. From here he accesses the records of staff, finds a weak point and digs deeper into the system, getting around the firewall and access as much data as needed. The ending? I’ll let you check it out for yourself.
In the second episode, Slater compromises the security of an organisation that looks after medical records by changing the medication of the one person who is in charge of keeping data safe in the case of a breach through – you guessed it – a printer. Slater manages to keep this one point of contact down until he can get the data he needs by finding printer weaknesses in several organisations.
Following The Wolf is The Fixer, the solution to security weakness. The Fixer series is a short three part conclusion to The Wolf, with Jonathon Banks going through how the right printers and the right security measures can ensure protection from all angles.
This series is a great way to illustrate the power someone can have when an organisation does not have security across the board – including their printers.
Check out the series here and let me know what you think – is your organisation safe? Can we help you make it safer? Don’t be at risk to the wolf on the prowl.
1 Based on HP internal global market sizing data divided by HP shipments as of December 2016 of Enterprise-class printers and MFP’s priced $599 and above that uniquely include (or could be upgraded) with a combination of security features for integrity checking down to the BIOS with self-healing capabilities.
Your printer could put your entire business at risk. Confidential data. Employee information. Everything. And all of it is vulnerable to a cyber attack, putting your entire organisation at risk. Hp’s series, The Wolf, is a great illustration of what can happen when your printers are not secure.
While fictional, the issues faced are very real. Traditional sources of hacking are often protected very well, but printers are commonly forgotten. In the clips featuring Christian Slater, there are a few examples of what can happen.
The first video shows Slater’s character hacking into a large financial corporation. His main access point – the printer. From here he accesses the records of staff, finds a weak point and digs deeper into the system, getting around the firewall and access as much data as needed. The ending? I’ll let you check it out for yourself.
In the second episode, Slater compromises the security of an organisation that looks after medical records by changing the medication of the one person who is in charge of keeping data safe in the case of a breach through – you guessed it – a printer. Slater manages to keep this one point of contact down until he can get the data he needs by finding printer weaknesses in several organisations.
Following The Wolf is The Fixer, the solution to security weakness. The Fixer series is a short three part conclusion to The Wolf, with Jonathon Banks going through how the right printers and the right security measures can ensure protection from all angles.
This series is a great way to illustrate the power someone can have when an organisation does not have security across the board – including their printers.
Check out the series here and let me know what you think – is your organisation safe? Can we help you make it safer? Don’t be at risk to the wolf on the prowl.
1 Based on HP internal global market sizing data divided by HP shipments as of December 2016 of Enterprise-class printers and MFP’s priced $599 and above that uniquely include (or could be upgraded) with a combination of security features for integrity checking down to the BIOS with self-healing capabilities.