IN TOUCH : Goodbye secrets

What happens to the information on the hard drives of printers, scanners, fax machines and multifunctional devices (MFDs) when they’re sold or returned to the lease company?
Recent discoveries in the US have suggested that many companies fail to wipe off information that can easily end up in the wrong hands. Modern copiers and MFDs, which combine printing, scanning and faxing, now have internal hard drives like computer that store information.
Canon country manager for New Zealand, Mike Johnston, says: “We are conscious that many customers use their machines to manage sensitive information and we advise companies to make themselves aware of the security measures incorporated in their devices.”
Information typically stored on the hard drive of an MFD may include system firmware, temporary image data, job logs, user address books, device settings and any documents stored by the users in the device’s mailbox or advance box, says Johnston.
Canon offers new standard security feature on all its imageRunner and imagePress systems which allows one-time overwrite of the device’s hard drive to be performed directly by the customer.
“The majority of the machines returned to Canon undergo hard disk overwrite, but we strongly advise customers to take responsibility for their own data protection before returning machine to Canon or particularly before selling it to another entity,” Johnston emphasises.