Strengthen the positive

As individuals and organizations we tend to focus on improving our weaknesses rather than exploit our strengths. Today I received a blog post from the Institute of Management Consultants addressing this. While the post specifically is aimed at consultants, the advice is good for all individuals and organizations. Read this post.

Are you compromising security when making copies?

The digital copy machine is a marvel. It not only copies but can create seemingly unlimited sets from one set of originals, can save paper by printing on two sides, and enable enlarging, shrinking, cropping and more. Depending upon the features included in the machine it can fax, scan, and output directly from a computer.

The dirty little secret that the sales people forget to tell is that every time the machine is used, the originals are saved on a hard disk just like the disk drive in your computer. I do understand that to scan a set of originals and output multiple sets of the same, the machine needs to store the images of the originals for the current run. However, once the copy session is completed there is no opportunity to select a document from memory and reprint. So the question is, why not erase the images of the document once the current project has printed? Yet the images persist on the disk drive seemingly forever.

While the data on the disk drive is not readily accessible, if the drive is removed from the machine and connected to a computer running the right software, documents previously copied can be viewed and printed.

There is probably minimal security threat of a machine currently in use. Once the machine has been traded in or sold you have no idea who might gain access to it for nefarious purposes such as identity theft or corporate espionage!

As a user community we need to ask copy machine manufacturers to expunge all traces of images after a print job has been completed. In the mean time when you trade in or sell your copy machine you should have the disk drive removed after which you should physically destroy the drive. (Of course, a new drive will need to be installed for the machine to be used again).

See this CBS news report.

Will Limkemann