Hewlett Packard takes a step forward to secure its printers as part of a broader strategy to provide the deepest security across PCs and printers. Thus, its three new enterprise class Laser Jet printers- HP LaserJet Enterprise M506, MFP M257 series and HP Colour LaserJet Enterprise MFP M577 series- now delivers increased protection against malicious attacks.
As its VP, Printing Systems, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP puts: “Protecting against security breaches is one of the biggest challenges our customers face. HP is helping customers secure their devices, documents and data by defending our enterprise printers with the strongest protection in the industry.”
A study by Ponemon Institute shows 64% of IT managers believe their printers are likely infected with malware and at the same time, 56% of enterprise companies ignore printers in their endpoint security strategy.
Hence, HP releases three new features to address the gap in printer security. HP SureStart can detect malicious BIOS attacks and trigger self-healing recovery. This feature has been protecting HP’s Elite line of PCs since 2013. Besides that, Whitelisting ensures only known, good firmware can be loaded and executed on a printer. Last but not the least, Run-time Intrusion Detection provides in-device memory monitoring, which was developed in partnership with Red Balloon, an embedded device security company.
Going forward, HP LaserJet Enterprise printers and OfficeJet Enterprise X printers will come ready with these features. Existing users need to install a firmware update to make use of them.
Beyond the printer itself, HP also assists customers in protecting their print environment with HP JetAdvantage Security Manager, a one-of-a-kind policy-based printer security compliance solution. It lets IT establishes and maintain security settings, such as closing ports, auto-erase files and disabling access protocols. Any impacted settings will automatically reset upon reboot. It will also include auto-discovery of devices for simpler management of printers.
