Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Hard drives in copiers

Carolyn recently got one of those "The sky's falling; the sly's falling" sort of email claiming that copiers now have hard drives in them and those hard dries are j ust full of images of all that has been copied on that machine.  Since peple don't know about the hard drive, sensitive and private information is being unnecessarily spread and left open to misuse.  The plea, as usual, was to forward the message to everyone you know and love.

Like every good rumor there was a grain of truth in the message.  Yes, many copiers have hard drives in them, a warning that was made on a major TV network almost a year ago.  (so much for a timely warning).  But almost 8 years ago Xerox put out a pamphlet entitled "Hard Disk Security for Printers, MFPs, and Copiers that Resellers need to know to advise their customers."

I don't know how widely the pamphlet was distributed or how much resellers  used it to warn customers but it's all in there.  Using the normal machine controls there isi no way to access hard drive information.  And the better machine effectively wipe out each hard drive after each job and when the power is shut off.

Should you worry about your copier's haard drive and security being compromised?  Yes.  Should you panic? No.  Call your copier supplier and request the particular status of your copier's hard drive.  Then remind him that  his company is also responsible for security.

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