New study shows U.S. consumers have an insatiable appetite for tech gear and a strong reluctance to recycle it.
The proliferation of next-generation printing and imaging devices comes with a caveat: On-board storage makes these machines a trove of sensitive corporate data.
It’s common knowledge in corporate IT that the hard disk drives lurking in outdated and out-of-service PCs, laptops and servers can be a trove of critical corporate data if improperly discarded. But what about all of those peripherals?
Take a look around most offices today and you’re likely to see dozens of modern imaging devices all connected to the network and dutifully processing — and storing — print jobs, scans, copies and faxes. Like their PC counterparts, those smart printers and multi-function devices from Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Ricoh and many others sport HDDs of their own. And they’re just waiting to spill company secrets if the CIO decides to toss them in the dumpster like so much office trash or, worse yet, tries to hawk them on eBay.
HDDs may be down, but they’re definitely not out … especially if you know where to look.