Hewlett-Packard (HP) has unveiled three new enterprise-class LaserJet printers, which the company says deliver increased protection against malicious attacks.
The products were unveiled yesterday at the HP Innovations Launch Conference in Barcelona.
The company said the product release is part of its broader strategy to provide deeper security across PCs and printers.
Tuan Tran, VP and general manager, LaserJet and enterprise solutions business at HP, presenting the keynote speech, said protecting against security breaches is one of the biggest challenges organisations face.
Today, printers are Web-enabled, making them just as vulnerable as PCs, so HP is introducing enterprise printers with strong protection, said Tran.
"For the last 18 months, the anxiety level of cyber security around printer security specifically has really increased substantially. Print security is not just an HP problem but an industry problem - which the entire industry really should start talking about," said Tran.
Patricia Titus, distinguished fellow at the Ponemon Institute, said printer security is now a topic of growing importance.
The interconnectedness of mobile phones and business tools to printers is adding risk, she noted.
Titus said it is important for companies to think about how the Internet of things creates network risk.
She pointed out, a few years back, printers were viewed as low-risk devices, but that has now changed, given the proliferation of bring your own devices and employees working at home - exposing companies to risk they have not had before.
According to Titus, printer security is becoming a problem which most companies do not think about and do not have policies ready to govern.
"Organisations are not governing the use of printer security because they don't think of a printer as being a nefarious actor in the network. But like a PC, printers are now smart, intuitive - they think as well as store and forward data just like a computer."
For those companies that create policies, often times they cannot enforce them because they do not have the correct mechanisms in place.
Titus pointed out enforcing policies and training employees are some of the steps businesses can take to secure printers - but this is still not enough.
To help address the printer security gap, HP has introduced LaserJet Enterprise printers and multifunction printers with built-in security features.
The 500 series of LaserJet printing devices offer three technologies designed to thwart attackers' efforts and self-heal, said Michael Smetana, VP of LaserJet and enterprise solutions, EMEA at HP.
HP Sure Start enables detection of and self-healing recovery from malicious basic input/output system attacks.
Whitelisting ensures only known, good firmware can be loaded and executed on a printer, Smetana explained. Also, run-time intrusion detection is a new feature providing in-device memory monitoring for malicious attacks.
These features will be standard on new HP LaserJet Enterprise printers and OfficeJet Enterprise X printers going forward, said Smetana.
With a firmware update, these three features can also be enabled on several HP LaserJet Enterprise printers available since April.
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