According to a recent survey, while 94 percent of companies are aware of document and data security risks, only 25 percent take the issue seriously enough to address it directly.
Today’s highly sophisticated business technologies are changing the way organisations operate, yet a false sense of security prevails among Australian SMEs as they struggle to employ document and data safety measures, according to a recent survey.
While 94 percent of companies surveyed say they are aware of document and data security risks, only 25 percent took the issue seriously enough to address it directly with their staff.
Protecting confidential documents is more critical in business today than ever before but the research, commissioned by Konica Minolta, highlights a high level of complacency among business managers towards protecting their intellectual property.
“Security risks include documents left on the printer and falling into the wrong hands, scanned data sent from a multi-function device (MFD) to an unauthorised smart device or the retention of sensitive IP on printers that haven’t been through the proper process of hard drive removal,” Dr David Cooke, executive general manager of Konica Minolta, states.
“Breaches such as these can incur a significant hard cost for SMEs, through legal disputes, a decline in sales and employee turnover, and soft costs such as time wasted in recovery of sensitive information and reputation damage. The hard costs quantified represent over a million dollars a year for SMEs as a group in Australia – but the soft costs can actually be greater and last longer,” he adds.
Surprisingly, the research found that 76 percent of businesses don’t believe the office printer is a potential security risk despite the sophistication of today’s MFDs. “MFDs are at the forefront of technological advances and provide a great service; however businesses need to be aware that these devices are not static in IT terms, they are as networked as the average computer and information sent to their hard drives can be stolen or copied,” Cooke notes.
“The issue of security isn’t going to go away – if anything, it will get bigger, so it’s important that businesses, both large and small, start implementing security policies across all areas of their business,” Cooke concludes.
