Comments on: Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets
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- Another scare you story.
Yes new MFP copiers have hard drives. Not every copier made since 2002 has a hard drive as the reporter stated. Example: Sharp AR 235, or ARM 275. They do not have hard drives. They store information to the rom chips, much like the information stored to your PC memory. There is an option as the story stated to erase what it is you scanned.
Just like the hard drive in your PC, one can run a recovery and find all sorts of old files. Of course this takes time and a recovery, decrypting program. This is not as simple as they make it seem in this story.
They interviewed the man from Sharp; he stated in the Interview there is an option which will erase all info. Of course this option cost money, like the software they are attempting to sell. Most banks and places falling under the Hippa guidelines will have this feature. Most companies do not want to spend the money for this option to erase data after it has been stored. The copier company can offer this option, ultimately the purchaser/leaser is responsible for this option.
The purpose of this hard drive is to store documents, for future use. Most often people don?t know it is there or how to use it, even after they have been properly trained to use the machine.
It would appear this Digital Copier Security is attempting to sell their product. A third party product, which most of the time is poorly written, and usually causes more security issues, and operational challenges.
Will this software stop a hacker from mapping the hard drive ( gaining acess)? What is the cost, what are the guarantees? What chanllenges will this present to the service people and IT people whom have to maintain this equipment? Will this void the warranty of the copier itself? Does Xerox, Sharp, Toshiba, Oce, LexMark, HP support this software in their machines?
I especially enjoyed their buying a Toshiba eStudio, for $300.00. I would love to know where to buy a full sized MFP that is fully functional and legal for $300.00. Perhaps they leased these machines for a few days.
This story only opens the eyes of would be thieves, maybe a few IT people. If one is paranoid after hearing this story.
Before you return a copier or get rid of it, replace the hard drive all together, drill a hole through the old hard drive, then disassemble it completely and smash it to bits, then maybe your stored information will be safe. I am certain this would be more cost effective then Digital Copier Security software.
Thank you CBS?? - Reply to this comment
- Good reporting by CBS News.
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- The only way you can be sure that the data is unretrievable is if you manually destroy the HDD and it's internal components itself. Do not rely on those "software's" because most likely, the programs have security holes within them if they have to be constantly updated (meaning whatever you're trying to erase could actually be being copied unbeknownst to you).
You or they could always replace the HDD. It's better that way. - Reply to this comment
- WOW... great article CBS ! thanks a zillion. You need to continue to run this article so sooner or later, everyone sees it !
No more running copies !, I'll buy a better HOME printer ! - Reply to this comment
- Hmm, sounds like a class action against the big copier companies. Where do I sign up?
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- "Juntunen's Sacramento-based company Digital Copier Security developed software called "INFOSWEEP" that can scrub all the data on hard drives. He's been trying to warn people about the potential risk - with no luck."
Why must they imply disk wipers are a new, state-of-the-art concept that no one is aware of? Any IT guy or office drone worth his salt should know better than to get rid of a HDD without decommissioning it with DoD-compliant wiper (I like the free Active DiskKill) or a magnetic degausser. - Reply to this comment
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