Monday, March 29, 2010

I AM A PHOTOCOPIER. I KNOW YOUR SECRETS















Some days I think we only survive in a twilight zone created by the ultimate stupidity of our corporate wanna-be masters. Maybe this is how NBC news came to learn that “the Republican National Committee in February spent about $2,000 at a sex-themed California night club called Voyeur West Hollywood. It also spent more than $15,000 on ritzy Beverly Hill hotels.

“Want to know what expenses your boss claimed last month? How much your colleague makes? What the co-worker down the hall is really working on? Forget about hacking their computers – you might want to hit the nearest photocopier instead. Turns out the newfangled, multi-purpose copy machines in your office keep a wealth of copied data on a hard drive that anyone can hack. In the age of everything digital, the photocopier is probably the one workplace item you never thought to worry about. It's just making a copy of a document, right? How risky could that be? Very risky, as it turns out. You might want to press cancel on the copy machine right about now. Victor Beitner, a security expert who reconfigures photocopy machines destined for resale in Toronto, says businesses are completely unaware of the potential information security breach when the office photocopier is replaced. They think the copier is just headed for a junkyard but, in most cases, when the machine goes, so does sensitive data that have been stored on the copier's hard drive for years. "If I was the kind of person looking for certain information, this would be a gold mine," said Beitner, founder of Cyber Security Canada, a security, privacy and threat management company. "People have no clue of what the risks are." Click here for the rest.

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