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About Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials helps you to guard your organisation against cyber attack.

cyberessentials certificationSouthwest Digital Systems has become Cyber Essentials certified. Cyber Essentials is a Government-backed and industry supported scheme that helps businesses to protect themselves against the ever growing threat of cyber-attacks.

What Is The Cyber Essentials Scheme?

Cyber Essentials is a Government-backed, industry supported scheme to help organisations protect themselves against common cyber-attacks.   According to the UK Government, 80% of cyber-attacks could be prevented if organisations put simple cyber security controls in place.  The scheme identifies some fundamental security controls that organisations should have in place to secure themselves against common cyber threats.

What Are The Benefits Of The Cyber Essentials Certification?

The Cyber Essentials scheme provides organisations with clarity on what essential baseline IT security controls they need to have in place to reduce the risk posed by common threats on the internet. Organisations that achieve certification can demonstrate to their customers, through the Cyber Essentials badge, that they are proactively taking steps to mitigate cyber security risks

A simple virus or piece of malware could result in loss of company and client data, disrupt your cashflow and take up staff time.  An attack could also put off your customers, stop you trading and damage your hard-earned reputation.  Loss of data could breach the Data Protection Act and lead to fines or prosecution.

What can Konica Minolta Bizhub’s do to aid Security?

The possibility to move away from expensive to run desktop laser and ink jet printers to a cost effective central Multi-Functional Printer is always a tempting one.  However, this is usually met with a chorus of disapproval and arguments that include; “My documents are confidential and can’t be seen by anyone else”, or “It’s just convenient for me to print to my printer here”.  These are both valid up to a point; however, there is a compromise in the innovation of secure User Boxes.

Simply print your documents from your workstation and send them to your individual user boxes on the Bizhub’s Hard Disk Drive which can be secured by a PIN code.  Then retrieve the documents safely and securely whenever suits the individual.

The user boxes can also be used to store regularly used documents for quick and PC-less printing such as holiday request forms, health and safety documents and risk assessments.

Scan & Print at the same time

Another feature of the Konica Minolta Bizhub range is the Scan and Print feature. Which is the ability to scan a document to a shared folder or email destination whilst simultaneously producing a hard copy for your files. A great one click solution!

HDD Encryption

Copier security should be high on every company’s list of considerations but, it’s often overlooked. For instance, do you know if all your printed, copied or scanned documents are still retained on your current machines Hard Disk Drive? With SDS and Konica Minolta, copier security has for a long time been standard with several other areas also covered along with HDD Encryption. The Encryption of all data prior to being stored in the machine’s memory, this is then cleared after copy, scan, and print use and automatically runs without user intervention, this also assists with your GDPR: What does it mean for printed, photocopied and scanned documents?

The foundation of a GDPR compliant system is a well-designed and secure information system. The regulation raises the bar, stating that security should be designed-in from the beginning and that personal data should be anonymized wherever possible.

In a 2017 Quocirca report, more than 80% of companies report concerns about print related data losses, with 61% reporting actual losses in the past year.
There are three areas of GDPR that will affect your business:

  1. Security of data currently held
  2. Consent for use of data
  3. Transparency on how you will use the data

The first area is the one of most concern when talking about machines from Konica Minolta – How do we solve the problem of data security on our machines?

Because modern printers and scanners often store documents, they need to be a major consideration when it comes to managing personal information.  One of the simplest and easiest solutions is Secure Print. Secure Print is a safety feature that will only allow the release of a print job when a user-unique PIN number has been entered into the device. This eliminates waste and keeps confidential jobs from falling into the wrong hands.

Another GDPR-friendly feature allows documents to be held in a print queue until the individual approaches the printer and authenticates the job themselves. This eliminates the problem of uncollected printed material falling into the wrong hands. Secure Print can also ‘forget’ an ex-employee’s entire print history, thereby reducing the amount of data held by your company.
It’s also worth reviewing how any physical, printed documents are stored on-site to ensure your business is completely compliant.

Encryption is the key to email compliance. Many devices in the Bizhub range include the function to encrypt scanned files (including PDFs). Once encrypted, the files require a unique decryption code before they can be opened. PDF files can also be encrypted using digital ID and PDF digital signatures. The ability to limit access to digital email address books adds an additional level of security underwriting routines to make deleted data irretrievable.

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