Most businesses now have systems in place to protect their valuable server-based data from hackers and other outside intruders. But the bigger threat to a company’s confidential and closely held information—intellectual property, customer data, proprietary product information and other sensitive material—can be the MFPs in an organization.

To prevent these devices from being the weak link in the document security chain, vendors offer a number of security products and features. For example, since many jobs are written to the devices’ hard drives, security kits are available to encrypt or delete sensitive information that passes through a company’s print, copy, scan and fax data streams. To ensure that sensitive documents don't sit on an output tray for other users to see, secure print release solutions require the user who sent a job to authenticate at the MFP before it is printed. There are also a range of authentication solutions to control and track access to device features based on user permissions set by the administrator.  

Document security solutions are a must for government, legal, finance and education practices, as well as any business or department that handles sensitive information. They are especially helpful to those organizations that must comply with the Federal Information Security Management Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach Bliley, HIPAA and other industry regulatory standards.