The modern office printer is a machine of many talents. It can print, copy, and scan your most important documents in a flash. Connect it to the Internet, and it can do all those things and more from any device, anywhere, thanks to the advent of printer apps and nascent cloud computing services like Google Cloud Print or HP’s ePrint. But that same connectivity has made these devices a prime target for hackers seeking easy access to your office.

Michael Sutton at Security Research published a lengthy blog post last year that exposed the simplicity with which a hacker could purloin copies of potentially dangerous documents left on the scanner of unsecured HP all-in-one printers. After testing multiple Web-connected printers this year, we’re expecting these cloud computing devices to be a serious security issue, the exploit involves ferreting out unsecured Web-connected printers with simple Google search strings like “Estimated Ink Levels” and “HP PhotoSmart” and taking advantage of poor password security to remotely subvert a printer and scan documents using HP’s WebScan feature.

Now, it’s perfectly safe to do iPad printing, iPhone printing, or any other type of smartphone printing or mobile printing directly into the cloud using PrinterOn’s remote printing solution since the printer is never exposed when behind a network firewall.   All remote printing jobs are pulled down from inside the secure network, fully encrypted, until time of printing. Moreover, additional privacy of the document is inherent with PrinterOn’s technology due to the generation of unique release codes for each print job delivered.  The job only prints when the sender enters their unique release code at the print device. Therefore, one never needs to worry, that a confidential document will be picked up off the printer’s tray by prying eyes.