HP 635n HP Jetdirect Security Guidelines - Page 4

How old is Your HP Jetdirect? Once in a while, when doing an inventory of a network, an administrator may discover some network connected devices that rather old but are still working. The same is true for printers and HP Jetdirect devices. An easy way to get an inventory of your HP Jetdirect devices is to use the HP Download Manager available here: http://www.hp.com/go/dlm_sw. This utility allows you to discover printers and their HP Jetdirect devices on the network. For an in-depth management platform, try HP Web Jetadmin available here: http://www.hp.com/go/webjetadmin. Keep in mind, you don't have to update the firmware on your HP Jetdirect products if you don't want to (HP does recommend it), but for this particular section we simply want to find HP Jetdirect devices and based upon their product number, see how old they are. Refer to Table 1 - HP Jetdirect Aging Description Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 HP Jetdirect J2550A, J2552A MIO Print Servers Microsoft Windows 95 HP Jetdirect J2550B, J2552B MIO Print Servers HP Jetdirect J3110A, J3111A EIO Print Servers HP Jetdirect J3263A 300X External Print Server HP Jetdirect J3113A 600n EIO Print Server Microsoft Windows 98 HP Jetdirect J3258A 170x External Print Server Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional HP Jetdirect J4169A 610n EIO Print Server Microsoft Windows XP HP Jetdirect J6057A 615n EIO Print Server Microsoft Windows 2003 Server HP Jetdirect J7934A 620n EIO Print Server HP Jetdirect J7961A 635n EIO Print Server Date Released February 1994 May 1994 August 1995 November 1996 October 1997 January 1998 January 1998 June 1998 September 1998 February 2000 October 2000 October 2001 April 2002 April 2003 April 2004 October 2005 Table 1 - HP Jetdirect Aging Table 1 is by no means complete. Many Jetdirect cards were introduced before 1994; however, some popular HP Jetdirect products are listed there and compared to some of the Microsoft Windows introduction dates. It would be rare to find a reputable security analyst willing to spend time discussing the security issues associated with Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Microsoft Windows 95 in today's environment. When viewing public information about the security vulnerabilities of HP Jetdirect devices, be sure to keep in mind how old the devices may be. At the time of this writing (August 2007), migrating to Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Windows 2003 SP2 is very important to get the most security protection for desktops and servers. Microsoft provides many guidelines to the proper configurations of their products and many security consultants make a living by helping customers deploy these configurations. Customers are willing to carry this expense because the security of their data is very important to them. If your printing infrastructure is important to you, should you not consider upgrading it and implementing recommended security configurations as well? As a point of comparison, some companies place a lot of their faith in a printing infrastructure that they developed in the early 1990s. How many of these customers would also be willing to run Microsoft Windows 95 on their desktops and Microsoft Windows Advanced Server 3.51 on their servers today? 4