A M Exclusive Blog

Yesterday HP released firmware to address critical threats that cover popular LaserJet printer & MFP models. The threats have CVSS scores of 7.5, 8.4, and 9.8. If these patches are not applied, you may be leaving your printers vulnerable to information disclosure, denial of service, or remote code execution.

Follow-Me Print allows users to send a print job to a central queue and then walk up to any printer and release their job. Here are some reasons to consider implementing this:

At A M Exclusive, we’re big fans of making lemonade out of lemons! While I’m sure, like us, you are yearning for more of a return to normalcy and would love to have more people in the office, the reality in the IT world is that having minimal staff allows for some unique advantages when tackling projects. Not only that, the changes to how we work are likely here to stay, so you’ll need to be prepared with the technology to facilitate a hybrid at-home/in-office culture.

As cybersecurity attacks become more sophisticated, organizations need to implement more policies beyond their firewall to protect themselves. The concept of “Zero Trust” was introduced back in 2010 by John Kindervag and is centered on the belief that an organization should not automatically trust anything outside or inside its perimeters.  With human error being the leading cause of cybersecurity breaches, you need to have additional protections in place in case someone accidentally lets the bad guys into your network.

In the past, as experts in repairing HP printers, we would answer the question of whether or not to update printer firmware as pretty much a hard “NO.”  The only reason we would recommend updating firmware was if the printer was not functioning the way you needed it to and you found out that the firmware update addressed that issue.  Updating printer firmware, like many things in the IT world, can be like opening a can of worms: you can unintentionally cause an issue that wasn’t happening already. (I’m sure all of you have, at one time or the other, experienced the pain caused by a Windows update!).

However, as you know, the IT world has changed, and due to the constant cyber security threats out there, what we recommend has evolved. In addition to considering updating printer firmware when it can resolve a known issue with a printer, we recommend that you also update this firmware whenever it addresses a known security vulnerability.

For example, here are some security vulnerabilities addressed by firmware updates that you may find lurking in your HP printer fleet:

Forbes.com recently published an article talking about new research exposing major vulnerabilities with office printers, where the author concludes “Those innocuous devices could be the easiest entry point for cyber attackers into small businesses, enterprises and government departments,” and encourages to “ask your support team when the last time all those printers were inventoried, checked and patched.”  Additionally, recently at DEF CON there was a session entitled, “Why You Should Fear Your Mundane Office Equipment,” that exposed additional vulnerabilities of printers across manufacturers.