Digital copy machines pose serious data security risk. Digital copy machines pose a serious data security risk as most companies fail to delete thousands of copies stored on the copier's hard drive before returning hired machines or selling them.
According to a CBS report, nearly every copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. Investigations found that this data usually still stored on the hard drive when the machines were resold, creating a potential digital data time bomb. A video by CBS covers the purchase of four secondhand copiers from a warehouse in New Jersey for US$300 each. The information retrieved from the hard drives of these machines included information from the sex crimes division of a police unit in the City of Buffalo, Read more...
According CBS, John Juntunen, who has developed free software called InfoSweep to scrub the information on these hard drives, has been trying to warn people about the potential risk without success. Privacy: FTC to Look Into Copy Machine Privacy Breakdown. By Brian T.
HorowitzTechNewsWorld 05/19/10 11:15 AM PT Add digital copiers to your list of things to be afraid of. Turns out most of the machines built since 2002 have copies of every image they scanned stored on their hard drives -- and when those machines change hands, they're seldom wiped clean. The FTC has taken steps to inform manufacturers, resellers and office supply stores about the risks, but what is the agency really empowered to do? ManageEngine OpManager, a powerful NMS for monitoring your network, physical & virtual (VMware/ HyperV) servers, apps & other IT devices. The Federal Trade Commission has responded to an April 29 letter from Rep.
The FTC said it was aware of the privacy issues and planned to take steps to inform manufacturers, resellers and office supply stores about the risks associated with digital copying and see that they were taking steps to provide options for secure copying. Leased Copiers Returned The FTC and Rep. Educating the Public. FTC targets privacy concerns related to copy machines. IDG News Service - The U.S.
Federal Trade Commission has begun contacting copy machine makers, resellers and office-supply stores about privacy concerns over the thousands of images that can potentially be stored on the machines' hard drives. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, in a letter to U.S. Representative Ed Markey, said the agency has been working to alert copy machine manufacturers and sellers of the privacy risks of the information that many copy machines store on their hard drives. The FTC is trying to "determine whether they are warning their customers about these risks ... and whether manufacturers and resellers are providing options for secure copying," Leibowitz wrote in a letter released Tuesday by Markey's office. CBS News, in a report that aired April 19, said that nearly every copy machine built since 2002 stores documents copied, scanned and e-mailed by the machines on their hard drives.
Markey said he's pleased that the FTC is looking into the privacy concerns further. Erase Your Copy Machine's Hard Drive to Wipe Important Documents. @gnutin: A week?
Over the years I've scanned about 10,000 documents of various sizes, but probably roughly equivalent to what people use an office copier for. The directory they're in consumes ~10 GB GB, more or less a MB per document, which is about right for a few pages of black and white comparessed PDF. So, considering that you can hardly find a hard drive smaller than 250 GB these days, and these machines could easily have 1 TB drives in them, you're talking about between 250,000 and a million documents.
The truth about copier hard drives: Tips for securing your data. After watching the recent CBS News report on the data security risks of office copiers, I decided to learn more about these multi-function peripherals for myself.
Here are some tips for securing MFPs in your organization. Watching the CBS report on how documents are being stored on copier hard drives was confusing to me. I decided to investigate the state of security on these multi-function peripherals for myself. I recently read an article by Bill Detwiler, Head Technology Editor for TechRepublic. Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets. At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold.
CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports almost every one of them holds a secret. Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. In the process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data. If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold. "The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen said, "that information would be very valuable.
" Buffalo Reacts to CBS News Investigation Juntunen's Sacramento-based company Digital Copier Security developed software called "INFOSWEEP" that can scrub all the data on hard drives.