Brother pushing the security message

Brother is keeping security at the top of its agenda for the next year as it reaches out to inform channel partners of the protection its devices can offer customers.

The vendor has a number of security features included in its hardware, including encryption and a restart to prevent an attack, and is reaching out to partners to ensure they can cover off the security conversation with users.

"It is one of the most important things on IT managers desks at the moment because they have been made aware of it from the publicity that surrounds cyber attacks. We are encouraging and educating the channel over the importance of security," said Andy Johnson, head of product and solutions management at Brother UK.

He said that knowledge levels at users varied and it had a white paper on the subject that resellers could use when they went out to talk to customers. 

"From a printer perspective we have security, from releasing a print job to scanning and encryption. We have a lot of security features on the device," he added.

Printers are often maligned as being weak links in the corporate network and users are right to be concerned but Johnson said that a lot of the criticism was unfair.

"It's not just the printer," he added "At the moment users are getting a lot of emails that are sent into businesses as phishing attacks and the email side is one of the most important things."

Others in the industry agree that security is going to remain one of the top concerns in 2020, along with sustainability and artificial intelligence.

"While security has always played a crucial role for IT staff, the huge amount of high-profile data breaches in recent years have made businesses more security-conscious than ever before. As companies continue to adopt smarter and integrated workflow solutions, the security of the entire system must be considered as a whole," stated Ross Penman, head of global delivery management at Y Soft.

"Unfortunately, too often the security of the print IT is overlooked. However, print hacks such as the PiewDiePie incident showed that organisations can never play it safe," he added "Therefore, better collaboration between an enterprise solution provider, the MFD service provider and an organisation’s IT department is crucial."