Faxes and copiers hang on to your sensitive documents a lot longer than you think

As if worrying about causing a data breach through simple fax error weren’t enough, there’s another menace lurking in your office equipment that can sabotage your security. Most copiers and fax machines less than seven years old contain hard drives or memory chips that can record and store any data sent through the machine; that is, any document you copy or fax.

Although office equipment vendors or repairmen may be prohibited from accessing or divulging that data, retrieval by a thief or third party is not difficult, especially when many businesses do not seem to realize their sensitive documents have been archived in this way. CBS News recently conducted an investigation at an office supply warehouse, where they randomly selected copiers and attempted to retrieve stored documents. Using a program available for free on the internet, they were able to retrieve “tens of thousands of documents in less than 12 hours.”

This particular news story resulted in a health insurer filing a breach notification for 409,000 individuals who may have had their information compromised due to the information stored on the copy machines. Of course, this story is by no means new – an ABC affiliate in Denver ran basically the same story back in 2009. In any event, such news should certainly be a wake-up call to any office that has sold their copier or returned a leased copier in recent years.

. . . Look for “Part 3,” which will be posted tomorrow (Friday)!

by Charlotte Rose, CIPP
Senior Investigator, Kroll Fraud Solutions

Tags: data breach, data security, fax, hard drives, office, safeguarding personal information

Categories: Consumer ID Security, Data Breach, Data Security Issues.