As the physical and digital become increasingly entwined and interdependent – as we start to build a world of blended reality with seamless transition between the digital and physical – cybersecurity both grows in importance and gets harder to effect. We need significant innovation in the field if we’re to realize the many benefits that blended reality can bring us. We must ensure that cyber-attacks can’t wreak havoc in the physical world, for example, and deliver the privacy that we all require and expect in our interlinked cyber-physical lives.
Our adversaries, meanwhile, aren’t standing still. Attacks of unprecedented speed and scale are challenging traditional approaches to detection and remediation, approaches that are also poorly suited to the emerging infrastructures of the future. In addition, cyber-attackers are moving far beyond the theft of data and user identities, with many now focused on provoking massive disruptions, like rendering large numbers of computers inoperable, for commercial or political gain.
To meet these challenges and to deliver on the promise of a blended world, we need entirely new approaches to security and systems design. We need to rethink authentication and how we ensure secure interaction with the digital world. And we need both new ways of protecting systems and innovative approaches to detection and recovery from successful attacks.
We must start by developing robust foundations for our future information societies, with devices that can be trusted and deemed reliable for even the most mission critical tasks.
It is in this spirit that HP continues to invest and lead the industry in its approach to device security. We’re introducing ever better protection mechanisms for device integrity while integrating automatic detection and recovery capabilities to add resiliency against some of the most significant classes of cyber-attacks. This starts with the PC and mobile endpoints that are widely understood to be on the frontline. But it extends to all connected devices, including printers, which are also sophisticated endpoints that warrant similar protection. It’s why HP SureStart, the industry-leading security innovation available for the last two years in HP notebooks, was introduced this month in HP LaserJets printers, enabling cyber-resilience in those devices to the lowest levels of rootkit and firmware attacks.
Security is a challenge for our entire industry. HP is tackling it head-on, placing security at the heart of what we do, in our product portfolio, in our research focus, and in our leadership around industry standards. We’re designing our new products and solutions with security in mind from the start and not added as an afterthought – delivering security out-of-the-box. And through the innovations that we’re designing, building, and testing right now in our world-class security research organization, we’re helping ensure that our emerging cyber-physical world will remain safe for generations to come.
To read the latest announcement on HP printer security, click here.
