Early photocopiers used liquid toner and were extremely messy but dry toner was introduced to combat these problems. Now the image could be clearly seen on the drum or plate. Transference pulled the toner from the drum onto the paper via transfer charge that was again charged opposite to toner but of a much higher capacity in voltage than the drum or plate. After Transfer the copy is then fused to the paper using heated rollers coated in silicon oil.

Analogue copiers relied on light being reflected onto the photosensitive surface through a lens. Because the light had to be a very high intensity they required fans to keep the machine cool during copying. These fans attracted dust and the copier mirrors often became coated with a film of dust often resulting in poor copy quality. In addition the machine had no memory and required a scan for every copy made.

Digital Copiers were to replace the analogue counterparts. Although they still reflected light it no longer needed to be so intense so cooling was minimal meaning the photocopier attracted less dust into the optics. The light now was reflected into a unit that converted light and dark into a binary signal. The copy then is projected onto the drum via a laser or an LED array and stored onto a hard drive allowing it to recalled. This allowed for scan once print many on modern photocopiers. However storing data on the hard drive caused security risks and manufacturers had to introduce secure data encryption of hard drives to prevent data being stolen from the photocopier.

As copiers seek to be more environmentally friendly charge rollers have largely replaced corona wires leading to reduced or zero ozone emissions on modern copiers. Silicon Oils have been vastly reduced as the modern copier offers superior toner technology.

Mail shots used to be hampered by expensive printing cost but computer design and superior printing and copying has relegated the need for screen printing. What’s more mail shots can be more targeted, segmenting local market place to areas such as schools, solicitors and estate agents. The copier can be the marketers friend allowing small campaigns to be launched at minimal cost.

Direct Marketing has long been proven as a successful way to promote your business and is one of the earliest forms of advertising. By publishing newsletters and mail shots directly to the customer the business offers a unique way to stay in touch with local clientele. With so many companies using digital media for advertising competition is high. Online advertising has increased massively in recent years but pay per click and email marketing has no longevity.

By publishing locally through direct marketing you are able to offer vouchers that can be kept and used. A local newsletter may contain a useful list contacts that the customer keeps. A successful newsletter may attract its own advertising and become self funding for the business. Some of the most successful mail shots team up a group of local companies that provide alternative services and the cost of advertising is reduced, whilst the value to the customer increases and with a range of discounts available to them on the mail shot or newsletter that they are not likely not to throw it away.

So next time you look at the photocopier in the office think of it not just as an expense but potentially your own personal printing press. Put your copier to work for you creating exciting business opportunities in your local area.

Hate Copiers Love OnlineConnect

From Yahoo to Facebook body art and temporary tattoo’s are the latest internet craze. In a way I suppose its the ultimate form of branding. Not to be outdone OnlineConnect.co.uk the photocopier company joined in with our own model above next to Yahoo’s superb body art. Of course its all just for fun but incase anyone is tempted to do this permanently we suggest Tattoo artists put up a sign. “Tattoo’s are for life Internet Companies Come and Go”

Publishers seem to face a loosing battle as their content is lost in a sea of data and efforts to stem copyright theft becoming a constant battle for intellectual property. Draconian fines and even incarceration have failed to prevent the free distribution of copyrighted material. A hypocrisy has arisen from publishers that are keen to gain from the huge internet audience and at the same time as promoting artists and video through sites such as Youtube and Metacafe have also been entangled in litigation. Singers and songwriters made famous through distributing their content free on sites such as Myspace have then condemned copyright theft after their popularity had risen sufficiently to sell their recordings.

In 2007 Radiohead out of contract with their record label became the largest band in the world to distribute an album “Rainbows” free of charge through the internet, telling fans to pay as little or much as they like for their recordings. The move was not universally popular drawing criticism from the music industry and other artists. However amongst the public it was both welcomed and visionary propelling Radiohead’s popularity worldwide. In Sweden there were protests when the founders of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison for facilitating the distribution of copyrighted material via their torrent search. The Swedish public made clear their feelings in 2009 by voting Pirate Bay to a seat in the European Parliament.

Rupert Murdoch has taken the decision to put much of the content of the News Corporation behind a “pay wall” in an effort to establish paid content online. Many Internet experts claim this goes fundamentally against the principals of the World Wide Web and its goal of distribution of information. However Eric Schmidt of Google recently commented on the need for journalism, which is not adequately served by blogs. Investigative Journalism has long been the cornerstone of democracy. JFK referred to the press as playing a fundamental role in a free society in his address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, 1961.

“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed–and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment”

Micro payment for content on the internet has failed to succeed in previous attempts, but a copyright free society may be inadequate to fund effective investigative journalism and undermine civil freedom. Today we are experiencing the biggest change in the distribution of information and media in our history. That change is fundamental and unstoppable but much as many seek a copyright free society we must be aware of the dangers that presents.

Creative Commons seeks to reinvent the cumbersome copyright system by building a framework for sharing content on the web within HTML5. They seek to wrap copyright within the markup through a system called RDFa (Resource Description Framework in attributes), making it easier to copy and paste content. Adopters of the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL) include Flickr, Google, Facebook and Drupal. Technology and the internet are now causing us to rethink the role Copyright serves on the world wide web and in a modern open society.

Google have had a turbulent time with Chinese censorship claiming that Government Censorship is inconsistent with its corporate ethics. Google shut down its search Web site in China on March 22 because it said it disagreed with the Chinese government Internet censorship policies. However, Google are now set to renew its web services according to latest reports. Google had been redirecting its China users to their Hong Kong site where the censorship is not applied.
Chinese proxy servers regularly appear online in an attempt to get round blocked internet content. Using a proxy ip address to surf the Internet has become a common thing among China’s cyber community.
The economy of the People’s Republic of China is the third largest in the world and despite disagreements over censorship many companies see that the benefits of competing in China outweigh the problems with the Golden Shield Project.
With a rumoured cost of over $900 million the Golden Shield Project of China remains one of the most sophisticated firewalls in the world. Blocking IP Addresses of non-government approved websites and controlling DNS. This latest rule in Tibet extends the controlled distribution of information to the low-tech world of copiers

Apple sold one million iPADS in the first 28 days, outselling the iPHONE when launched. The iPAD succeeds where previous products such as Amazon Kindle have failed but it was not greeted with universal approval when launched. “Isn’t it just a big iPHONE?” was the most common remark whilst others tagged it iLAME. Dom Jolly even revamped his mobile phone sketch using the iPAD. The iPAD name that Apple purchased from Fujitsu has also been the butt of jokes on twitter where users made fun of its resemblance to a female hygiene product. One twitter user posted “I am already going through 4 – 5 iPADS a day due to my heavy workflow”. However Apple have a loyal following in desktop publishing from the Steve Jobs Apple Mac and the iPAD appears to be exactly what they have been waiting for.

The Tablet PC is not a new idea. Bill Gates’s Microsoft made the term popular in 2001 when it launched “Windows XP Tablet PC Edition”. HP-Compaq produced the TC1100 series. Axiotron, in 2007, introduced a heavily modified Apple MacBook Tablet called Modbook and there was even a Linux based tablet called the ProGear manufactured by FrontPath. The iPAD is the start of a new era that will see the transition from Print to Pixels bringing the worlds of print and web publishing together. Beautiful pages where typography and design are not compromised can now be produced with interaction, animation and video streaming alongside articles. Notebooks don’t offer the same portability of the iPAD and the iPAD is the best in the field for screen based reading.

Printers and Photocopiers could become a thing of the past in a few years with less and less output to paper. Magazines, books and newspapers are set to be reinvented online. By changing how we read documents, Apple have created the next big hardware battle. Already Chinese manufactured iPAD clones working on Google’s Android Software have started to appear. Microsoft Courier is set for release soon, a 7 inch dual screen booklet that see’s Microsoft making further strides into hardware manufacture following on from Zune and Xbox.

The battle for the Screen Based Reader audience is unlikely to be defined by the operating system but by the hardware itself. Imagine a iPAD thats wafer thin and you can roll up and put in your back pocket like a magazine. That’s what the future holds. Flexible screen technology is very close to production with a team in Ireland close to a touch screen prototype. Samsung unveiled their 7 inch flexible LCD screen in 2005 and Fujitsu have a 3.8 inch flexible LCD panel that does not require a power supply. Ultimately its the flexible screen technology in the near future that will see us finally turn away from paper based publishing. Apple have won ’round one’ of the screen based reader and brought their product to market before Microsoft’s Courier but this hardware battle has a long way to run. Google having already produced the Nexus One, an internet mobile dubbed the Google Phone, and the Android operating system may yet enter into screen based readers as well. Amazon potentially have the most to loose if the iPAD continues to grow with Apple’s iBOOKS directly competing with another part of their core business following the success of iTUNES so presence in the screen reader market will be essential for Amazon.

In the report CBS using a photocopier expert purchased four machines from a used copier warehouse. Then using a forensic software program available free on the internet they were able to download hundreds of images including police records, payslips, social security numbers from the hard drives of the digital copiers.

One thing to remember is that encryption on photocopiers has improved with information on hard drives now encrypted by default. Most modern digital copiers support (IIO) immediate image overwrite or (ODIO) on demand image overwrite that will effectively delete saved images. Samsung’s latest digital copiers overwrite hard drive data three times in compliance with United States Department of Defense (DoD) directive 5200.28- M. This prevents forensic software from extracting usefull information. Xerox say there image overwrite feature is available on most of there digital copiers and this electronically shreds information.(Xerox Securty Information). Sharp also offer a security kit that encrypts data on the hard drive and shreds stored information.

Most manufacturers offer security software to remove data. The service technician can use the copier service mode to erase and reformat the hard drive. This option is available free of charge and can be carried out by your service technician at the end of the copiers life. Third party data removal tools do exist one such is INFOSWEEP (Copier Security ). Which incidently is offered by the same company that CBS used in its report to gain sensetive information from old copier hard drives.

Manufacturers have been extremely casual about security of hard drives. One important thing to consider is the obligations of companies and organisations to conform to the Data Protection Act. This act expressly requires that personal data be protected against unauthorised access by appropriate technical measures. The manufacturer may have a legal obligation to provide companies with the neccessary tools service and advice to protect data thats stored on hard drives from theft and this should be done free of charge.

In cases where the organisation or company need to conform to the DoD directive and software is not available to delete hard drive information then there is no alternative but to remove the hard drive at the end of the lease. Xerox has become one of the first manufacturers to publicly offer hard drive removal at the end of the copiers life.

Resource:CBS Report Into Security of Photocopiers

OnlineConect.co.uk have been aware of the security threat posed by  digital photocopiers for many years and carry out a full data wipe on all machines before they are resold. Jenny Robinson of Online Connect UK says “we are pleased this issue has been brought to the attention of consumers by CBS as we have been protecting our customers data but are aware this is not common practice”.

However, the risk to Corporate Intelligence and sensitive information is understated in the CBS report according to Online Connect UK. The problem goes back to the photocopier industry as a whole. When digital photocopiers came in there was a complete lack of training in security and the problem goes beyond hard drives. Online Connect share some tips on securing your photocopier at the end of its life.

Identity Theft

Avoid copying sensitive information on public photocopiers. The information could be retreived from the hard drive.

Hard Drives

Hard Drives are packed full of sensitive information. From incoming faxes, id protected print jobs to frequently used files. Multifunctional digital copiers have a data encryption facility and hard disk data encryption should be enabled. Additionally Secure Document Release retains the document until identity is verified via a PIN, password.

Delete all information on hard drive at end of copiers life.

The Print Server

The first digital photocopiers used print servers and IT Departments were aware of the information stored. Fiery Servers and Cyclone served as the connection between the digital photocopier and the network and for many high volume or colour photocopiers still do. But with modern digital photocopiers often the print server is embedded in the machine and it is the print server part of the machine that may hold the most vital information. In a remote print server like fiery or cyclone it will contain a copy of the print job on its internal hard drive so enable encryption an wipe hard drive of the print server at the end of the copier cycle of life.

Often large Companies route all print requests through a central server, this allows data archiving to be achieved efficiently and the central server may be remote. In such cases the digital copier can contain network addresses of the companies central server including subnet mask, ipaddress and passwords.

The Print Server should be cleared of all information at the end of the copiers life.

Scanning

The machine may hold data on individual workstations and passwords. Machines with scan to email will hold private email addresses of individuals within the corparation or organisation.

All scanner and email information should be removed.

Print Queue

Often held in the RAM of the machine pending print jobs can contain sensitive information. Often the digital copier is replaced due to unreliability and by simply clearing a paper jam the machine can start printing out a wealth of information.

Clear all pending print jobs.

Fax

A list of fax numbers transmission times dates and received documents may be stored on a multifunction photocopier.

Delete all fax information at the end of copiers life.

Passwords

Machines set up for multiple user accounts will have common passwords stored. Unfortunately these passwords may be used in other areas of the business. A print out of photocopier passwords could lead to a more serious threat to security if passwords are used elsewhere within the organisation.

All passwords should be removed at the end of the photocopiers life.

Many used photocopiers are destined for india, africa and the middle east and it is important to ensure secure information is removed from the machine.

If you have concerns about security of your office equipment you can find Online Connect contact details on there website: http://www.onlineconnect.co.uk/

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