Melville, N.Y. – While digital transformation helps companies work smarter, the ongoing digitization unlocks a wealth of security vulnerabilities that can cost companies money, time, intellectual property, and customer trust. In its latest Office of the Future survey, released today, Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, finds that all organizations surveyed across a range of verticals experienced a cyber threat over the past year.

In its mission to take a holistic approach to security – from the device level to cybersecurity practices – Canon explores the top cyber threats based on the survey and offers insight as to how Canon products and solutions can help companies proactively protect themselves to work to close critical gaps in their cybersecurity agendas.*

Conducted by global tech market advisory firm ABI Research**, the survey of more than one thousand U.S. IT professionals reveals three, pertinent cybersecurity threats:

Malware and Ransomware: More than one-third of respondents consider malware and ransomware a first priority threat. Yet, 25% of respondents say that employees have limited to no security awareness, nor do they understand their role in prevention.

Canon and McAfee design engineers recently joined forces and worked collaboratively to implement McAfee Embedded Control as a standard built-in security component on Canon third generation imageRUNNER ADVANCE third edition solutions.1 The feature, once enabled, helps protect against zero-day and advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks by blocking the execution of unauthorized applications through intelligent whitelisting. This helps reduce the risk posed by sophisticated malware and alleviate some concern among companies to leave less room for worry and more for productivity.

Compromised Devices: In today’s digital age, and with remote working trends on the rise, 21% of surveyed IT decision-makers rate compromised devices as a priority threat. Respondents then rank data security, network security, and user authentication & ID management as the top three most relevant technologies to help counteract this threat.

In addition to the benefits from its recent McAfee integration, Canon continues to take measures to help users tackle the many different potential target areas of compromise. This includes helping to protect the imageRUNNER ADVANCE MFP hard drive with a number of optional encryption and overwrite features, offering authentication and Secure Print release functions via the company’s flagship print management solution uniFLOW, as well as the inclusion of SIEM integration capability2 in the latest imageRUNNER ADVANCE lineup.

Social Engineering: The human factor is a persistent threat. In fact, survey respondents consider malicious insiders (30%) and human error (25%) to be the two top threat sources.

As employees may not always understand, or be aware, as to what is a pervasive threat, Canon, in addition to its flagship uniFLOW offering, works with two notable third parties in order to help employees share information outside of their organization: cloud content and email management solutions Box® and mxHero™. 3 Further, Canon marries its advanced technology like predictive maintenance with the strength and skills of our channel partners and service providers through ongoing training and support to help provide a comprehensive solution to customers.

Survey results include additional gaps, such as lack of appropriate cybersecurity spend across certain verticals; however, it also indicates hope, with nearly 25% of those surveyed stating that they are looking to increase investments in the key growth area of cloud security in the future.

For more information on the findings from Canon’s latest Office of the Future survey, visit https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/explore/OOTF. 

†Based on weekly patent counts issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office.

*Canon products offer certain security features, yet many variables can impact the security of your devices and data. Canon does not warrant that use of its features will prevent security issues. Some security features may impact functionality/performance; you may want to test these settings in your environment.

**ABI Research collected the data from 1,015 respondents through an online survey conducted in April 2019. Respondents included IT decision-makers at the manager-, director- or C-level, from a full spectrum of U.S. companies, ranging from 500 to 5,000 employees, across multiple industries including Financial, Retail, Government, Manufacturing, e-Commerce, and Media, among others. The survey included 20 questions comprised of Likert-type, rating scale, rank order, and multiple-choice questions with additional options for open-ended answers.

Nothing herein should be construed as legal or regulatory advice concerning applicable laws; customers must have their own qualified counsel determine the feasibility of a solution as it relates to regulatory and statutory compliance.

1 McAfee Embedded Control is supported only on imageRUNNER ADVANCE 3rd edition models. Existing 3rd edition models in the field will support McAfee Embedded Control once the device firmware is updated to Unified Firmware Platform (UFO) v3.9.

2 Separate purchase of Security Information Event Management (SIEM) required, Canon cannot ensure compatibility with all SIEM systems. Subject to third party SIEM system terms and conditions. Neither Canon Inc. nor Canon U.S.A., Inc. represents or warrants any third-party product or feature referenced hereunder.

3 Canon U.S.A., Inc., through its subsidiary Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc. (CIIS), has a strategic partnership with Box and mxHero. Box and mxHero are third-party cloud services, and a separate subscription to both is required. Users will be subject to Box and mxHero terms, conditions and warranties. Neither Canon Inc. nor Canon U.S.A., Inc. represents or warrants any third-party product, service or feature referenced hereunder.