Office Document Strategies Blog

At the risk of appearing to hammer the topic to death it is time to take another crack at warnings about Ransomware Malware attacks.  

This time of year is potentially even more challenging to IT managers and users alike as everyone is rushing to get things done before the holiday season really locks in.  It means that normal caution can easily be thrown away as people try to clear their email, deal with online activities and perhaps not take that extra two seconds that avoidance can take.

Why now?  Simply because the predators can.  A recent IT World Canada article outlines how late last month Carlton University had over 3000 of their computers affected, some in research labs by an attempted ransom ware attack.  It appears that the IT people got it under control pretty quickly and it was isolated to only a portion of the university network.

It did mean however that thousands of students, faculty and administrators were unable to use the network for a period of time while the details of the attack were sorted through.  Eventually, users were advised they could login to their network but many hours of productive time was lost due to the issues.

Another attack in Calgary saw that university paying out $20,000 to the ransomers.  Again much time and effort was expended to deal with the circumstances.  These are just two of the known instances where Canadian organizations have been impacted by such attacks.

The are for certain many others where users and organizations have not publicized their problems with malware.

 For some reason Canada is reported as being more prepared to send compensation for removing the attack when compared to other jurisdictions.  Why this would be the case is subject to speculation but unfortunately if it gets known in the perpetrators world it could lead to Canadian targets becoming even more frequent.

What do you do?

The first line of defense is the users on the network.  Encouraging everyone to take a little time to investigate whether an email from an unfamiliar source is legit.  If a user is not CERTAIN of the sender then the default response should be to NO OPEN IT.  Either delete it and take the chance someone legit has to try again, or contact IT support to have it checked out.  

Recent announcements about Microsoft contracting for massive amounts of wind generated power to run several of its data centres causes me to think that this kind of  renewable energy just may have a good life without massive government structured subsidies.  

When 3D printing was first talked about what we saw was neat production of small plastic parts that might be used to assembly a toy, a display or some sort of interesting art object. Today this type of use is become pretty mainstream with small 3D printers being introduced for home or office use either for educational benefit or for design display. 

Regular readers of this blog will know that we spend a fair bit of time dealing with warnings, updates and suggestions on dealing with IT security and data protection.  At times it seems like we never talk about anything else and I wish we didn't need to cover this topic so heavily.  

Just about a month ago HP and Samsung announced a deal that will see HP acquiring Samsung's printer business which is said to be about $1.8 billion US annually.  It appears that after many years producing print products as an OEM supplier and then a few years doing so under its own name Samsung has decided that it should focus on other aspects of its electronic industry.  

In the announcement HP has said this is the largest print related purchase that it has ever made.

HP has long used Canon engines for many of its laser printers and with this deal it gains the potential to move much of its engine production and R&D to the Samsung based designs.

I observe that it is only a few years that Samsung has been producing and selling its own brand of A3 (traditional 11 x 17 copier sized) products and it may be access to this area is one of the keys for HP.  Over the past ten years or so HP has struggled trying to find a fit with multifunction printer devices under its brand which can take control of the office print market like they have successfully done with their laser printer models which are primarily A4 (letter/legal) sized.

By acquiring Samsung they instantly obtain a recognized set of full bore A3 office multifunction devices in both colour and mono which can be branded HP and could complement other units in their offerings.  For those dealers which have been selling Samsung equipment it presents a bit of a challenge, but not one they will not have handled before.  Potentially they may have a broader set of options presented as HP fills out the line.  For most they will be dual branded and will have another line to use to fulfill customer needs.

Industry Changes Ongoing

This acquisition is just another step in a steady shift in the print market as the volume of paper changes and the moves to a more electronic or digital document world continue.

Konica Minolta was created through the merger of two separate brands in 2003.  Ricoh has built up its operations through a string of brand purchases over the years, Ricoh acquired Savin, Gestetner, Lanier, Rex-Rotary, Monroe, Nashuatec, IKON and most recently IBM Printing Systems Division / Infoprint Solutions Company.  

Data security is an issue for every connected company in Canada.  Figuring out what to do to help you keep your critical information safe is a challenge for everyone but probably even more of one for the typical business professional without solid IT background. 

This recent video published by IT World Canada offers some helpful insight through a Data Security Consultant's eyes which can assist business managers to focus some of their attention in the right places.  In most instances it will take the assistance of someone with a solid IT security technical background to set up your operations to carry out the suggestions made in this video, but it can go a long way to help you ask the right questions and perhaps determine who could be the right fit for your needs.

In summarizing the video, CSO Digital: Security Situations series editor Ryan Patrick highlight four things:

• Implementing effective security awareness for all in your organization, new and old employees
• Maintaining the right levels of access to data of each type, with privileged access only to those who need it
• Protection of data at source, as close as possible to where it resides, internally or in the cloud
• Implementing threat hunting practices to help identify activity on the network which is outside of the norm

In a 2014 study or the levels of use of Account Payable automated systems respondents indicated that paper invoices remain a big part of their payables operations.  70 percent said that at least 50 percent of their invoices are still being tendered in paper format and less than 9 percent said paper invoices are less than 10 percent of their total volume. 

If you need to improve productivity and find a simple way to Scan to your PC, Mac locally or in Cloud Apps like Microsoft 365 (Office 365) OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or others, then this could be the App you have been looking for.

Most modern MFPs (multi-function printers) include the capability of basic network scanning in their setup. Using simple scan to email, or scan to folder systems, they make it possible for users to send and convert paper documents to images like PDF format. This capability provides many benefits to your users in the 'war on paper' but still leads to manual steps for filing or renaming, making the systems not as efficient for frequent work.