Page 28 - PWM2024_DECEMBER EBOOK
P. 28
TECHNOLOGY REPORT
Don’t byte off more than
you can encrypt
e need apps to get anything done.
Want to talk to support – use chat. There are plenty more examples including some for the
Need to buy a widget – go online. world of print. Consider the 2014 story where Frip
The highly digitised Good luck trying to speak to a human Finishing in Leicestershire issued a warning to the sector
world we inhabit being. This new world brings conven- of the dangers of having a Voice Over Internet Protocol
would be alien to Wience and speed. But it also involves telephone connection after falling victim to a £35,000
someone sitting on serious risks that didn’t exist in the analogue world. SIP Trunk fraud. A fraud was carried out over the
Previously we’d write a memo or send a letter and wait
Halloween weekend in 2011 that resulted in Frip being
the Clapham for a response. Now, someone on the other side of the invoiced for call charges totalling £29,631 for the month
Omnibus 20 years planet can access information in milliseconds, including of October 2011 which, with a nominal £2 admin fee and
ago. But imagine that which a business considers critically important, if VAT saw the total bill reach £35,560.
not confidential. Worse, they can cause chaos from afar
someone doing the with a key stroke. And in 2022, cyber security experts at Cybernews said
same 30 years further Between July 2017 and April 2018, Dixons Carphone that they had hijacked close to 28,000 unsecured printing
devices worldwide and forced hijacked devices to print
back in time and con- saw 14 million personal records and 5.6 million payment out a short five-step guide on how to secure a printer, with
sider what they’d card data hacked. The company took a year to start drib- a link to a more detailed version of the guide on its web-
bling out information about the attack. The ICO subse-
think. quently levied a £500,000 fine and the company ended site. Using software the site started off by finding more
up closing 100 Carphone Warehouse stores and rebrand- than 800,000 printers online. It then chose 50,000 to
Words by ing to Currys. hack and successfully connected to 27,944.
In March 2020, Virgin Media had the personal data of More recently, in September 2023, Stockport-based
Adam Bernstein
900,000 customers stolen and made publicly accessible Digital ID was named as the company at the centre of a
for some 10 months. Following the incident, Virgin cyber attack and data breach that potentially involved the
Media reportedly faced a class-action lawsuit with a details of thousands of Metropolitan Police staff in rela-
potential total compensation payout of £4.5bn. tion to warrant cards and staff passes.
26 PrintWeek MENA December 2024 www.printweekmena.com