Data breach. Those two words should send a shiver down any business owners spine whenever they hear them. If it happens it means someone has access to your data, passwords and who knows what else making it a very scary prospect. This is why you should always take maximum precautions to make sure it doesn’t happen to you but how easy is it to have a data breach? Actually easier than you think.
When I work from home I have an old HP 3050 Deskjet setup in the office for printing. Using HP e-print I can print from my phone, tablet and of course the laptops and MacBook. My wife’s phone is also setup too. Everything was working great until last week.
I got a text from my wife on Friday saying she had just sent a document to the printer and the app on her phone said it had printed but the printer, whilst turned on, had not printed anything. I text her back saying I would take a look when I got back home. Before I even got in the door our neighbour came around and handed me a piece of paper which Tash had printed to their printer next door!!!
It turns out our neighbours had got a new HP printer and setup HP e-print using the default settings meaning anyone could print to their printer (even if you are not on their network). Since HP e-print works using email addresses you only have to be online. When my wife searched for our printer she had mistakenly picked the wrong one and her document had printed next door. Since the document was of no real value this wasn’t a big issue but it could have been.
You see us humans are the weakest links in any security policy. We leave passwords on screens, don’t shred confidential data, tell people our passwords and generally make securing a network an absolute nightmare. The problem tends to be we need the network to be secure but don’t want the hassle involved in securing it.
Next time you think all this security stuff is too much hassle remember you can either be secure or you can have convenience but unfortunately not both.
And me? I am off for a chat with the wife.
About the Author
Hi I’m Chris Wakefield the owner of ComTech IT Support. I provide Cisco, Windows, OS X and Linux based IT Support to small businesses throughout Scotland.
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