It's about time that you understand that office equipment and devices that hold information - either temporarily or for long periods of time - can be accidentally or intentionally transferred to criminals who wish to make a quick buck by directly using or selling this. Your office photocopiers and those found at stores like Kinko's can now be added to the list of items that can leak your company's personal data. These multi-function printers usually contain small hard drives that can be removed and accessed by virtually anyone who has a computer and a hard drive data cord.

Recent personal data losses across the nation have been attributed to employees mishandling or purposefully removing hard drives for the purpose of exploiting information that is digitally held by the memory devices inside them. The problem is so significant that a major copier company issued a security advisory warning that the hard drives on many photocopiers can store scanned documents.

How Easy is it to Obtain Information or Documents from Copy Machines?

I decided to do a little test of my own by going to my local Kinko's, since our office copier lacks anything "high-end." I found a higher-end digital copier machine that had scanning capabilities. My intention was to ask a Kinko's employee if the machines had hard drives embedded within their skeleton.

However, I came across a information security hazard that immediately captured my interest. I discovered that the machine had a "recall" option where the last three items copied or scanned were still made available! I chose one of the three, and the MFP started printing out 10 copies of what appeared to be a confidential presentation from a local company that was proposing the acquisition of a large, publicly traded company.

I later checked secondary research and open-source news and investor sites and discovered that the notion of a merger or acquisition with the company in question was not even being considered, much less publicly released. This could have caused a real issue for the company involved if a "get-rich quick" trader had leveraged this information in the stock market.

I then asked one of the Kinko's employees about the hard drives allegedly installed in these machines. The employee kindly told me that these copy machines were "top-of-the-line digital MFPs each containing 1 Gigabyte of hard drive space for storage."

Another Shocking Reason Why Your Local Copy Shop is a Source for Competitor Intelligence

When I asked how information could be accessed from the MFP hard drives, she told me that the hard drives are "easily removable" from the machines. I then inquired about how this might place personal or corporate information at risk, and I was surprised by the response I received from her: "Internal MFP hard drives are definitely an issue, but what gets me the most is when people come in here from area businesses and photocopy and print dozens of copies of confidential and non-public materials and then just leave extra copies laying around. I am always picking up off the copy machines copies of presentations marked 'confidential,' 'do not distribute,' or 'internal company information - not for external distribution,'" the employee told me.

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