Tuning Abbyy FlexiCapture Layouts and Document Definitions

So you have spent many hours analyzing and creating the layouts and definitions for the documents you need to be processed through Abbyy.  Now you should be almost ready for production, except you need to tune.  Many samples of the documents in question need to be run through and the results checked over very carefully to find and fix all the little issues that will be present.

Tuning involves not finding the bugs in your definitions but finding the little differences in the printed documents that are processed.  These differences may be due to printing offsets on the printed form that is then run through the printer where the actual data to extract is found.  In addition, there can be other cases where the Header or Footer elements are not extracted correctly.  All these differences can add up to Abbyy not detecting the correct document definition to apply to the scanned images.

In order to correct these issues a very careful analysis of results need to be viewed through the Design Studio.  Import the document in question into the Studio and then process it.  Look carefully at what was missed.  Many times it is due to the Search Area not being large enough to cover all the letters/numbers to be extracted.  Also, within a group the required and option flags have a lot to do with if the group is found or not.  All it takes is one search element within the group that is not found and the entire group may be marked as not found, so be sure to check them over the flags carefully.

There are going to be times with multiple Document Definitions that a specific document does not match the definition it should have, but some other definition.  This can be caused by the error percentage on the wrong document definition to be set too high a value when both document definitions share a similar field to extract.  To fix this just take the error percentage down a few points and try the recognition again.

It takes a lot more effort to tune a document definition especially when dealing with multiple document definitions and paper documents that are difficult to scan in with enough clarity for the OCR engine to work properly.  This is very true for Transcript type documents where each transcript has its own copy protection mechanism that the scan software must try and compensate.  However it works out, so be prepared to spend the time and effort to get the document definitions to the point where they work most of the time.

Christopher J. Hillenburg
Senior System Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.

Features in ILINX Capture (Part I)

The feature set in ILINX Capture is vast and it can be a drag reviewing and interpreting feature lists in software documentation.  Those of you not familiar with ILINX Capture can visit the following website www.ilinxcapture.com, or feel free to leave a comment and we can provide additional information and/or a hands-on demonstration.  In short, ILINX Capture is a web based capture platform that excels in distributed capture and custom capture workflow environments.  It is scalable to work on a single workstation or it can be extended to an enterprise wide global standard for capture in your organization.

I wanted to use this post to touch on a couple of the features that I see being used more and more in ILINX Capture.  These features became part of the product based on customer feedback, industry direction, and internal vision for the product.  All of the following features can be added to any point in your process flow map, so it provides not only the functionality but also the flexibility to adapt to the business needs of current processes in place today.

1. 2D Barcode Support   – This feature adds the ability to read metadata, classify and separate documents, and provide quality control checks through the recognition of 2D barcodes.  Through a GUI the user has the ability to parse the barcode data and map it to fields, separate and identify the type of document, and validate that the number of pages in the document match what was captured through the scanning or electronic import process. 
2. Web Service Integration  – This feature provides ILINX Capture with the ability to integrate with any existing web service.  Most commonly, we see this used to perform database lookups or validations against existing line of business systems.  Another way this is being utilized is to interact with different organization processes, for example, you can create a support ticket in an organization’s support system every time a process exception occurs in their fully automated capture workflow.
3. Queue Thresholds & Triggers – Work queues in ILINX Capture are areas where human interaction is required to process data or documents through the workflow.  The thresholds and triggers provide the ability to monitor the batches or documents in a queue and execute a function when a threshold or trigger is met.  This is useful to monitor escalations or the processing of high priority documents.  For example, if a fax comes in to the system for an auto loan or stock trade, in most cases, this is a time sensitive process that needs to move rapidly through the workflow.  Between the notification features and the thresholds/triggers, ILINX Capture can ensure that 1) a user is notified that there is high priority work to process, 2) the documents are processed within a defined time frame, and 3) if the documents are not processed the system can notify a manager or route the documents to another user group.

These are just a few of the features that have been added to extend the functionality of this product.  Stay tuned to this blog for additional information on other features that help shape this product to provide value to its customer community. 

Ryan Keller

ImageSource, Inc.

When handwriting is your only option…. Peter Lang

When researching Enterprise Content Management capture projects, the question of handwriting recognition comes up again and again — and many people aren’t sure what to expect.  More commonly, their expectations are unrealistic. They think there is no hope at all, ever. On the other end of the spectrum, some think that tiny fevered cursive scribblings from a rushed meeting can be scanned (or even faxed) and read with accuracy. In helping people think about their forms and the viability of capturing handwriting, I have a few simple guidelines to consider which seem to apply in a majority of cases.

• Are handwritten forms really the only option?  If the form is available online, can the data be made “fillable” and then submitted directly to your database tables?  Can you let the user fill the form online and print, thus producing machine print and eliminating handwriting?  How about taking the data that a user entered and bar coding it (if the form must be printed rather than be submitted)?  Also helpful and sometimes overlooked:  prefilling form  data from your database through a merge process with a bar code index for retrieval of that same data.
• Does your Capture software support ICR?  Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) is what you need to read handwriting.  Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is much more common and is designed to read machine print.  Please don’t try to make it read handwriting – you won’t like the results!
• Make sure the handwriting is constrained. Annoying? Perhaps. But making the person filling the form write in boxes sets you up for the most successful ICR results.  The catch phrase here could be “Curse the cursive”.  When a character is joined to another character it is faster to write.  However,  the ICR software really struggles to figure out where one character starts and another stops.  And here’s where recognition tanks.   With the real world example below, we can generally expect 100% recognition.

• Ask for all caps handwriting. You can often tell your ICR engine to look for upper case characters only. This really increases accuracy. And when the form filler forgets to write AS IF SHOUTING, you can often get OK results anyway.
• Show them how! I know it may seem condescending, but consider this a helpful reminder to those who would blow through the blocks in a mad dash. Show users an example of the way to write in constrained print fields.  And here’s where you can tell them to use all-caps, and show it in your example.

• Use key index values and database lookups! If there is an employee number, unique phone number, SSN/TaxID, or other unique ID for the person filling the form, use it whenever you can. Then perform a database lookup to confirm identity and optionally populate any other fields that you may need that happen to exist already in your database.
• Less is More. People burn out on filling lengthy forms using constrained print fields.  Try to minimze the amount the need to write and careless handwriting will decrease.
• Comb fields can work too. If you think all those constrained print boxes are just too hideous looking, try using comb fields instead. But remember, as soon as people ignore the combs and write cursively or sloppily, ICR results plummet.

• Use Drop Out Colors for the boxes. If your scanner and ICR software support color dropout technology, you make the ICR engine’s job easier. The boxes aren’t recognized by the scanner, but the handwriting is. So now the constrained print box lines (which make sure each handwritten character is isolated in a target area) don’t have to be considered during ICR.
• Use OMR bubbles if you really really need perfect index value from handwriting. Remember filling page one of standardized test?  This painful process might be worth it. This is called Optical Mark Recognition.  Since the engine just needs to confirm if a bubble is filled or not, this is easier and more accurate than OCR or ICR.

• Faxing? Well, OK. But recognition levels will go down.

With these hints in mind, you can look forward to results that are perhaps short of miraculous – that is, less accurate than OCR.  By all means, the results are still worthwhile and produce great time savings when properly implemented.    There are more tricks to describe, which I may save for a later blog.  Please contact ImageSource if you have any questions about capturing handwriting in forms.

Vetting ABBYY ‘Keen Eye’ FlexiCapture at ImageSource

First off, ABBYY means “keen eye”, an apt name for a product that dynamically and automatically captures and processes widely disparate documents.  Powerful document recognition separates and classifies docs, and state-of-the art optical character recognition rips the data from the images.  I like the motto that pops up on screen – “take the data, leave the paper”.  I love doing just that, sending paper briskly off  to start its next recycled life.  It’s the greenest thing to do, especially when compared to  filling endless cabinets and long-term off-site storage facilities.

When you want to recommend, sell, support, and solve major customer problems with ECM software at ImageSource, due diligence mandates a thorough feature review and testing.  I’ll describe some of the steps I was involved with in this process for ABBYY FlexiCapture – but mine is but a single slice of the vet team pie.  Development teams and other engineering teams performed specific examinations to answer questions about integration, APIs, and more narrow capabilities to solve unique problems faced by eager customers.  Also, ImageSource staff with a variety of titles took a week-long training course with intensive labs.  Unfortunately I missed the class but was given the opportunity to spin up for a pre-sales demo last year, which was a lot of fun.

So here’s a peek at our process:

 Laptop Install

First things first!  I like to be able to run new software on my laptop whenever possible.  This frees me from all bandwidth and location constraints.  I can easily focus on the vet effort on a plane, down by the river, wherever and whenever.  ABBYY FlexiCapture has a convenient ‘Standalone Installation’ which gives you access to all the key components on one box.

 Obtain Sample Images from Client

In this case we gathered dozens of hardcopy invoices from a large international corporation.  The images were not pretty and included originals, copies, printed faxes, you name it.

 Ascertain Server Needs

After reviewing the ABBYY documentation we set the requirements for our labs – memory per server, disk space, software required, scan station requirements, scanner requirements, and required operating systems.

 Spin Up VMs

Thanks to Mike Peterson we had three servers up in no time.

Convening the Team , Locking Down the ‘War Room’

Gene Eckhart, Jeff Doyle and I  met in our Olympia office for a week.  Gene secured the war room where we periodically met with developers, project managers, engineers, and principals.  Most of the time it was the three of us banging away.

 Lab Software Install

Now we installed ILINX Capture on one server, ABBYY ‘s ‘Distributed Installation’ on another server, and SQL server on the last.   This architecture would mimic what we’d encounter in the field – and also the standalone install wouldn’t cut it as it doesn’t scale and it uses SQL Express as a support database. As installed,  we can easily add more servers for high-volume stress testing.  By running a WebEx all week we were able to record every moment of each day’s work, easily pass the focus from machine to machine, and allow others a view of what we were doing who were remote.  We involved ABBYY tech support when we had a question and felt we could speed up an installation process.  Turns out we could, and it was great to have the technician join our session without delay and see what was up. Also, as we installed we meticulously kept a running log of any issues – however minor – we encountered.  At the end of each day Gene led a review session where we discussed and polished the invaluable ‘Lessons’ doc.

 End-To-End Test

This was our ‘Hello World’ moment – we set up communication between ILINX Capture and ABBYY, and created an appropriate ILINX Capture workflow.  Then we created a simple FlexiLayout, exported it, imported it into FlexiCapture, and created a document definition and an export.  We configured the scanner and the scan station and established we had end-to-end connectivity.

 Building Generic Flexilayouts

One of the many goals of our week was to share baseline knowledge as well as advanced techniques for capturing documents.  We identified  two forms that were relatively easy to identify  and constituted a large amount of the total paper volume.  In short order we had FlexiLayouts and document definitions configured.  Then it was time to tweak and refine.  The ability to chain elements together worked outstandingly – find a keyword, then find the nearest zip code with the help of regular expressions.  Then using out-of-the-box settings we could  find the state, city, address, and addressee.   Wow, powerful.

Building an Uber FlexiLayout

Now it was time to roll the sleeves and build a smarter FlexiLayout that could capture invoices from a variety of sources.  We used advanced features such as FlexiLayout alternatives, element groups, object collection elements, and other settings to start recognizing semi-structured forms from a wide variety of sources.  Then we added a little bit of FlexiLayout language code to help us “crawl” around the identified forms to find dates and monetary amounts that could sometimes be below keywords, or to the right, etc.  We didn’t need to script any validation rules for our purposes, but I showed some script I had created prior  to our meeting .  A quick unit test showed great results – we now had stepped away from a model where each form had to have its own FlexiLayout.

 Running Recognition Tests

We changed our lab coat to testing hazmat suits and ran many batches of documents we had used in development as well as documents we had never looked at before.

 Recording Results

While never a thrill, here we benefitted from a spreadsheet created by Jeff Martin, Gene Eckhardt and  Brandon Konen that allowed easy entry of recognition results.  This is known as our “Advanced Capture Analysis and Comparison Tool”, highly regarded in our ranks.  The data was automatically crunched allowing us to very quickly establish baselines, compare our scan results with other products, share our results with coworker and principals, etc.

Lessons Learned Doc Revisited

It’s a privilege to be able to work with industry veterans such as Jeff Doyle and Gene Eckhardt on a project such as this.  They brought years of experience with them to improve every process we covered.  While evaluating  the Lessons Learned doc, they were able to extrapolate possible impacts in environments and scenarios they have seen in the field.  They also add fresh mitigation alternatives to work through problems encountered.  Our Lessons Learned docs are part of a valuable and large knowledge base that has been added to at ImageSource for year after year.

Findings and Conclusions Write-Up

After a demonstration to some coworkers needing to ramp-up on our configuration, we collaborated to create a summary document and here Gene took the lead.  We were able to draw on the Lessons Learned doc, the Advanced Capture Analysis and Comparison Tool, and meeting notes to piece together our findings and quantify our conclusions.  The summary outlined the scope of our efforts, including excluded activities, our environment and products tested, results, conclusions, general observations, and Best Practice recommendations.

It’s one thing to kick the tires on a car before purchase.  But a methodical, thorough and thoughtful approach is the norm for analogous software tasks at ImageSource.

Lab/Development Environments – RightFax Simulation & Testing

At our company we have a lab environment that we utilize to replicate a large number of our customer implementations.  This environment runs on Virtual Servers in order to keep the cost and maintenance down for our organization.  Here are a few of the many advantages for us to maintain this type of environment for our customers;

1. The ability to reproduce issues and in turn expedite resolution and impact to the customer
2. A proactive approach to determining the impact (positively or negatively) of new patches, builds, and versions of software
3. Through development procedures (testing, QA, QC) can take place without affecting customer environments
4. The ability to give our support technicians, engineers, and developers a thorough understanding of the solution implemented

One issue that does arise on occasion is the ability to reproduce an issue that is occurring in a customer environment where we don’t have the underlying hardware or software.  This can be due to a proprietary product the software is interfacing with or a solution that is not realistic for us to manage internally.  One such case is with OpenText RightFax (formerly Captaris RightFax).  We have customers with all types of configurations from analog and digital fax boards to fax over IP (FOIP), and it doesn’t make sense for us to maintain all types of solutions.

The good news is that RightFax provides an “out of the box” capability to setup a RightFax solution without requiring fax boards or phone lines.  The power of this functionality is that it allows you to send and receive faxes internally to your RightFax system in order to simulate the real world functionality of the software.  This capability is referred to as running RightFax in simulation mode.  The following information takes you through the steps to enable simulation mode on your RightFax v9.4 (older versions of the software also have simulation mode, but the configuration is slightly different) system:

1. Install RightFax and get it functional, with the exception of the Board Server
2. Launch the Enterprise Fax Manager (EFM)
3.  
4. Open the RightFax Server that you want to configure
5. Right click on the “RightFax DocTransport Module” and choose “Configure Service”
6. 
7. When the DocTransport Module opens, click the Add Transport add the bottom of the window  
8. In the Transport Select window, select Simulation Device and click the Select button
9.  
10. You will now notice that you have a Simulation entry in your DocTransport configuration
11. The Simulation entry can now be configured as if you are setting up a fax board (e.g. setup the Fax ID for routing)
12. Next, you will need to create a dialing rule.  In EFM right click “Dialing Rules” and choose “New” to bring up the Rule Edit configuration.
13. 
14. Simply accept the default pattern of “+” to apply the rule to all numbers.
15. Go to the Destination tab, choose “Receive into Fax Server”, and set the name to your RightFax Server.  Click OK to close the Rule Edit configuration screen.
16. Lastly, you need to save the dialing plan.  In EFM, click on the File Menu and choose “Save Dialing Plan”
17. You are now ready to send and receive faxes on your RightFax Server.  The faxes can be sent to any of your configured users utilizing their routing codes.

The ability to run RightFax in simulation mode is a great trick for setting up and testing a RightFax server in your development or lab environment.  If you have any questions on this functionality or other topics related to this post, please let me know.  Thank you.

Ryan Keller

ImageSource, Inc.

 

Kofax 9.x – They’ve finally done it… Almost

I have been working with the Kofax Capture product for over ten years now. To prove that, let me tell you the configuration on one of my first installs. I remember setting up a Bell and Howell 3338 scanner (you know, the one that required a cherry picker to get out of the box and on to the desk) with the Kofax KF board and Kofax Capture version 2.x. Ah yes, I look back fondly on the old days of deploying a scanner with the Kofax card and software. I know it has been out for a while now, but I recently started working with version 9 of Kofax Capture and I am pleased to say that they have finally addressed some of the Kofax gotchas that have been plaguing us for years.

For starters, they made client deployment 100% easier by creating the MSI package. I can’t tell you how many conversation I have had with client admins that go like this:

Me: No we don’t have a SMS or other type deployment package you can use, but you can make your own.

Client Admin: (Furrows brow) Huh?

I will be much happier when those conversations are a little less embarrassing. Now the workstations can be deployed using Microsoft SMS, Group Policy, IBM Tivoli, Symantec Altiris, HP Openview, or whatever deployment suite you use. Kofax has only tested SMS, but with the MSI package it should work for any suite.

You are now allowed to have multiple instances of the Administration module in an environment at one time. They finally figured out how to manage their database and I am glad that they did. There are some caveats to this new functionality:

• In a KCNS install the Administration module can only be opened at the Central Site.
• Two users cannot be modifying the same object (Batch Class, Document Class, etc.) at the same time. This is a good thing, though.
• If you deplore change, you can disable this new feature in the ACConfig.xml

You can now retroactively update a Batch Class. THIS IS BIG! If you have ever had to export out 50 batches and re-import them in all because a checkbox was inadvertently checked in the Release Script setup, you know what I mean. Basically you can make your change, publish the Batch Class, and then update the existing batches in Batch Manager. There are some caveats to this new functionality as well, but they had to start somewhere. Here are some of the things you can’t add/remove/update:

• Queues
• Form types
• Folder classes
• Batch fields
• Document or folder index fields

Release Scripts are now known as Export Connectors. Sure it is still Release.exe, but I am much happier with the Export Connector name than I ever was saying ‘Release Script’.  This is especially true when we are selling productized versions. In addition to the out of the box Database and Text Export Connectors, we now have Email and Fax Export Connectors. The Email Connector works with Exchange and SMTP, while the Fax Connector works with Biscom, RightFax, and the Kofax Communication Server. Another nice thing that Kofax does is include the source code for all their Export Connectors. This way we can tweak and modify these things as needed.

One thing that Kofax has been sorely lacking is the Batch Workflow capabilities they have finally added. Nothing is out-of-the-box, but they give you the source code to a custom module called CMSplit that can split batches apart depending on the Form Type. Think of the possibilities. With Kofax Capture you can capture documents at one site, split the documents up into child batches depending on form type, and send the documents to different sites for processing. This workflow functionality has been lacking from Kofax Capture and I am glad they finally added it. It is just a framework and will require custom coding, but it is step in the right direction.

There are a number of other enhancements new to Kofax Capture with version 9, but I discussed above all the ones that actually made me say ‘Yes’ when I found out about them. Some of the other new or enhanced features are:

• Limited their OCR engine to ABBYY only, but you can request a patch for the old engine if functionality you used is no longer available.
• Enhanced .NET support for Validation scripting.
• Centralized scanner profiles have been improved.
• More options for PDF generation now.
• Custom Modules can now be deployed centrally with the Kofax Capture Deployment Service. This is a must considering any workflow with be done with a custom module.

If you are on an older version of Kofax Capture, I encourage you to look at what improvements you could make to your processes or management with an upgrade to version 9.

ILINX Capture Remote Management

In the years that we have been doing ILINX Capture implementations a common question usually comes up from the IT Administrators; “Do we have to log on to the server to access the administration and management features?”  The answer is: “No, the ILINX Capture Server Manager can be utilized by any remote computer with the proper access.”

The reason why this comes up is because there is a lot of functionality in the ILINX Capture Server Manager.  Not only from the technical administration perspective, but also from the business management side.  For example, you have the ability to monitor the system status, review audit logs, configure security, monitor batches/documents and queues, and much more.  All of this functionality can be individually enabled or disabled for specific users and groups depending on their needs.

The following steps show you how to install the Server Manager for remote access to the software’s administration features;

1.  Run the Software Install and choose “ILINX Server Manager” from the install package…

 

2.  Ensure that the workstation has port access to the ILINX Capture database open to Database.  For example, if you are using SQL Server for your database the default port is 1433.

3.  Provide the user/group with the proper administration access. 

a.  For a Line of Business Manager, it is common to just allow them access to monitor and manage the batches/documents in their queues

b.  For Tech Support, it is common to allow access to the Audit logs and System Monitoring features

This remote administration and management functionality has proven to be a valuable tool for this software over the years.  For more advanced remote admin/management tasks in ILINX Capture, feel free to leave a question in the comments and I will respond.  If enough similar questions are asked, I will drop another post on the more advanced tasks. 

Ryan Keller

ImageSource, Inc.

 

Nexus 2010

I recently attended the Technology conference put on by my company. Nexus®, as it is dubbed, is where we try to bring in all the local and national minds in our ECM space together. On the vendor side we had both hardware and software manufacturers represented. On the standards side we had credits offered for PMI, ARMA, AHIMA, and IAPP just by attending. There was pre-conference training on  Oracle I/PM 11g, a risk management course, and an AIIM ECMp course. For the user community we had attendees from Fortune 50 companies  down to small government agencies and everything in between. Sounds great right? It was.

As with any conference, you have to make it to the break out session that relate to you, and make connections with people that you can relate to. The latter was easy of course, we are all living and breathing the ECM world. Even if your content is different, the pain points are nearly always the same. It’s great to connect with others and find out their resolutions to similar issues, their approach to common problems, and to hear their success stories. Besides giving a presentation on our product ILINX® Integrate (something I have blogged about in the past), I also attended sessions on advanced document capture, ILINX Content Store, Oracle I/PM, and sessions on project management.

The breakout sessions had real value for me. The sharing of knowledge is essentially what Nexus is all about and the break outs are core to that. In years past, I have attended Nexus but allowed myself to do project work or provide technical support for the conference itself during the breakout sessions. This year I made it a point to attend as many sessions as possible and only missed two. I am confident I took the right approach.

I attended Shon Mueller’s presentation on advanced capture solutions and it was great. He was dynamic and brought a wealth of experience in his years at Kofax, ImagesSource, and other ECM technology companies. Jon Sutherland’s presentation on ILINX Content Store was informative for me as well. As a system’s engineer that’s busy in the field I haven’t had as much time as would like to work with our latest product offering. ILINX Content Store is a real solution for content management and I am quite confident we will see and hear more about it. Les Harris’ session on upgrading to Oracle I/PM 11g was an eye opener. I have worked extensively with the I/PM product line for many years and the new product accomplishes the same functions as all previous versions, but with an entirely new architecture. For those planning on sticking with the product it is time to start planning your upgrade path now. I also attended a session on project management in which Dennis Brooke discussed how to use Web 2.0 technologies to streamline project management and enhance project morale. The session sparked lots of questions form the audience and I could see the wheels turning as people thought how they could use these ideas in their own corporate structure. I worked with Dennis for many years and it was great to hear about some of the lessons learned and successes.

I have linked to all the presentations, please feel free to review them and all the other’s on the Nexus site.  All in all Nexus 2010 was a success and I can’t wait to see what ImageSource puts together for next year.

  

ILINX Product Suite

I am not usually out to promote specific products on this blog, but I have been getting really excited about the latest advancements in the ILINX Product Suite.  It is an area that I, among other experienced ECM technologists, have utilized our expertise in creating and refining solutions that can provide real world value for businesses implementing or utilizing ECM solutions.  Take a minute to read this quick post and judge for yourself the value that ILINX Products can provide for your organization.

You may be hearing the word ILINX used in Enterprise Content Management circles more and more these days.  From the humble beginnings of a simple release script connecting a document capture system to an ECM repository the ILINX Product Suite has grown into a set of powerful, easy to use products that provide quick ROI.  There are multiple levels to the ILINX Product Suite ranging from a full blown web client based document capture system (ILINX Capture) or an ECM Repository (ILINX Content Store) to variety of middleware products that can provide time savings and productivity boosting results like ILINX Integrate.

If you are not familiar with all that the Product Suite has to offer, check out the ILINX website for the details and product demos.

-Ryan Keller

The Unkown Security Risk In Your Office

The topic I wanted to touch on this week has to do with the security of documents in your organization.  Specifically, the security risks posed by printers, copiers, and multifunction devices in your office.   I have travelled around the country implementing document capture solutions, like ILINX Capture, that leverage the use of typical office multifunction devices and it amazes me how many companies do not know of this security risk.

How it started…

As technology advanced and data storage became more cost effective the internal workings of printers and multifunction devices changed.  The processing of documents for printing, scanning, and copying was offloaded from the computer or print server to the actual printer/copier device.  To handle the onboard processing for these devices, manufacturers began adding hard drives to printers, copiers, and multifunction devices.

What’s the risk…

In most cases, the hard drives in the printer, copier, and multifunction devices store a copy of every document that is printed, scanned, or copied.  This can be no big deal as long as the device is located in your office, but when the device is retired the documents on the hard drives are usually not wiped off and they go with the device.  Now you have a hard drive floating around with any number of confidential documents creating a huge security risk and possibly compliance violations.  The devices usually are packaged up and shipped overseas for a fraction of the original purchase price.  This is a scary thought because anyone could have access to your documents now.

The following is a recent news report that CBS News did on this very subject:     http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6412572n

What can you do…

• If you are leasing these devices, understand the contract between your company and the vendor/manufacturer.  Many times it is detailed in the agreement that the customer is responsible for the documents on the hard drive.  If it is up to your company to dispose of the records, take responsibility and ensure that this is done prior disposing of the device.
• Many manufacturers offer disk security and cleanup features for these devices.  It will most likely cost extra money, but the few dollars may be nothing compared to outfall of losing sensitive and confidential information.  One thing to keep in mind is that not all manufacturers will bring this topic up at purchase time.  Their number one objective may be to keep the price down and close the sale.
• Help spread the word of this risk.  Again, it amazes me how many organizations have no clue about this risk and with the publicity it will be getting in the near future we should see some progress in this area.

Please feel free to leave comments and let us know about your experiences and knowledge related to these devices and the risk they pose.  Thank you.

Ryan S. Keller

ImageSource, Inc.