Xerox Phaser 3260/DNI

BY M. DAVID STONE

The Xerox Phaser 3260/DNI ($209) is a little different from most monochrome laser printers in its price range. It’s meant as a personal printer or for shared use in a micro office, but instead of focusing on paper handling and running cost, like most of its competition, its strength is its output quality. If high quality is your key concern, and particularly if you have relatively light-duty print needs, that can make it your preferred choice.

In essence, the 3260/DNI$159.00 at Amazon is a variation on the Xerox Phaser 3260/DI$159.00 at WalMart at a little higher price and with Ethernet added as an alternative to Wi-Fi for connecting to a network. The Ethernet connector makes the printer a little more appropriate than its near-twin for sharing in an office. It also makes it more directly competitive with the OKI B412dn$199.98 at Amazon, and the Brother HL-5450DN$147.99 at Amazon, which is our current Editors’ Choice medium- to heavy-duty monochrome laser for personal use or for shared printing in a micro office.

Aside from the lack of an Ethernet connector in the Xerox 3260/DI, the two key differentiators among these four models are paper handling and running cost. All four include a 250-sheet paper tray and duplexer (for two-sided printing) as standard. Beyond that, the two Xerox printers offer only a single-sheet manual feed with no upgrade options. Both the OKI and Brother models include multipurpose trays as standard, for paper capacities of 300 sheets or more, and both offer additional options, boosting their maximum total capacities to 800 pages or more.

The OKI and Brother printers also have the advantage on running cost, claiming roughly 2 cents per page in each case. Both Xerox printers have a claimed cost of 3.4 cents per page, a difference that works out to well over $100 for 10,000 pages. Depending on how much you print, you could easily save enough with the OKI B412dn or Brother HL-5450DN to cover the initial price of the printer. And the more you print, the more costly either Xerox model will be over its lifetime compared with printing the same set of pages with the OKI or Brother printers.

Basics, Setup, and Speed
Like the Xerox 3260/DI, the 3260/DNI offers mobile printing, but it’s limited to support for Apple AirPrint and for printing through the cloud. If you connect the printer to a network by either Wi-Fi or Ethernet, you can print to it through a Wi-Fi access point on the network using AirPrint from iOS phones and tablets, as well as Apple computers that support AirPrint. If you connect to a single PC via USB cable instead of connecting to a network, you won’t be able to print through the cloud. However, you can still print using AirPrint, by taking advantage of the 3260/DNI’s Wi-Fi Direct to connect directly to the printer.

Setup is standard. The printer weighs only 16 pounds 13 ounces, making it easy for one person to move into place, and it’s small enough to fit on your desk easily at 8.4 by 14.5 by 13.2 inches (HWD). For my tests, I connected it to a network by Ethernet and installed the driver on a Windows Vista system.

Xerox rates the 3260/DNI at 29 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex mode, but the driver installs to print in duplex (two-sided) mode by default. On our business applications suite, I clocked the printer (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at a respectable, but not impressive, 7.2ppm in duplex mode and 8.9ppm in simplex mode, essentially tied with the Xerox 3260/DI in both cases. For simplex mode, it’s a touch slower than the OKI B412dn (9.6ppm), and slower still when compared with the Brother HL-5450DN(10.8ppm).

Output Quality
Output quality is one of the 3260/DNI’s strongest points, with text quality in the middle of a fairly tight range that includes most models, top-tier graphics, and photo quality that’s close to top tier.

For text, that translates to being good enough for nearly any business use, although not quite suitable for high-quality desktop publishing applications. Graphics output is easily good enough for any business need where monochrome output is appropriate, including, for example, PowerPoint handouts and the like. Similarly, photo output is equal to or better than most monochrome lasers can manage. That makes it good enough for, say, anyone who still prints newsletters, instead of sending them as PDF files.

Unless you can take good advantage of the Xerox Phaser 3260/DNI’s high-quality output, you’ll probably be better off with the OKI B412dn or the Brother HL-5450DN, with their higher paper capacities and lower costs per page. Similarly, if output quality is a key consideration, but you don’t need to connect by Ethernet, you can save a little on initial cost by getting the Xerox 3260/DI. If output quality matters, however, and you need to—or simply prefer to—connect to a network by Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi, the 3260/DNI is the obvious choice.

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Xerox Phaser 3260/DI

BY M. DAVID STONE

If output quality is your primary consideration for a personal monochrome laser printer or a shared laser in a micro office, the Xerox Phaser 3260/DI ($189) may be the one you want. It’s easy to find competing models that beat it for speed, paper handling, or running cost, but the 3260/DI$159.00 at WalMart stands out in its price class for its output quality overall, and particularly for graphics.

Obvious head-to-head competitors include the OKI B412dn$199.98 at Amazon that I recently reviewed, and the Brother HL-5450DN$147.99 at Amazon, which is our Editors’ Choice medium- to heavy-duty monochrome laser for personal use or for shared printing in a micro office or workgroup. All three are small enough to sit on your desk without taking up a lot of room, but capable enough to share among several users.

Unlike the OKI and Brother models, the 3260/DI lacks an Ethernet connector, which means you can’t connect it directly to a wired network. However, it supports Wi-Fi, so you can connect it through an access point. A more important difference is that the 3260/DI doesn’t match either the OKI or Brother printers for paper handling. All three offer a 250-sheet paper tray and duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. However, the 3260/DI supplements that with only a single-sheet manual feed. The OKI and Brother printers both include multipurpose trays, with a 50-sheet capacity for the OKI B412dn and a 100-sheet capacity for the Brother HL-5450DN. Both also let you upgrade to a total capacity of 800 pages or more. The 3260/DI doesn’t offer any additional trays. If you need more capacity, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Another key difference is running cost. The claimed cost per page for both the OKI B412dn and the Brother HL-5450DN is about 2 cents. Xerox puts the cost per page for the 3260/DI at 3.4 cents. The difference works out to well over $100 per 10,000 pages. Depending on how much you print, you could easily save enough in running cost with either the OKI or Brother printer to pay for the initial price of the printer.

Basics, Setup, and Speed
Like more and more printers, the 3260/DI offers mobile printing, although it’s limited to support for Apple AirPrint and for printing though the cloud. If you connect the printer to a network, you can print to it from iOS smartphones and tablets—as well as Apple computers that support AirPrint—over your Wi-Fi access point. If you choose to connect to a single PC via USB cable instead, you won’t be able to print through the cloud, but you can still take advantage of the printer’s Wi-Fi Direct support to connect to it directly and print using AirPrint.

Setup is typical for the breed. At 8.4 by 14.5 by 13.2 inches (HWD), the 3260/DI is small enough to share a desk with comfortably, and at 16 pounds 13 ounces, it’s easy for one person to move into place. For my tests, I connected it to a Windows Vista system by USB cable.

Xerox’s rates the engine at 29 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex (one-sided printing) mode, but the driver installs to print in duplex mode by default. (Xerox doesn’t provide a rating for duplex printing.) I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at a respectable, but not impressive, 9.2ppm in simplex and 7.1ppm in duplex. That makes it essentially tied with the OKI B412dn, at 9.6ppm for simplex, and just a touch slower than the Brother HL-5450DN, at 10.8ppm.

Output Quality
The saving grace for the 3260/DI, and the main reason to consider it, is its output quality. Text is in the middle of a fairly tight range that most monochrome laser printers fall in, making it not quite good enough for high-quality desktop publishing, but easily suitable for any other business use.

Graphics output is in the top tier for monochrome lasers, which also translates to being good enough for any business need where monochrome output is appropriate. Unless you need color, it’s easily good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Similarly, photo output is better than most monochrome lasers can manage, making it suitable for, say, newsletters, if you’re inclined to print your newsletters instead of sending them electronically.

If you don’t need particularly high-quality output, either the OKI B412dn or Brother HL-5450DN is likely to be a better fit, with the Editors’ Choice Brother HL-5450DN offering faster speed and better text quality, and the OKI B412dn offering a slightly lower claimed cost per page and slightly better paper handling. If your primary concern is output quality, however, particularly for graphics and photos, and you don’t mind the higher running cost, the Xerox Phaser 3260/DI is a more than reasonable choice, and can easily be the best fit.

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Xerox Phaser 6600/N

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically the same printer as the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN$474.99 at OfficeDepot, but without a duplexer (for two-sided printing), the Xerox Phaser 6600/N ($549) color laser printer offers the same capable paper handling, along with solid output quality across the board. Like its near-twin, it’s a little on the slow side. However, it’s a good fit for a small to medium-size office or workgroup that doesn’t need duplexing, needs to print a lot of pages by small-office standards, and needs the output to look good.

Literally the only difference between the 6600/N$403.19 at pcRUSH.com and Xerox 6600/DN is the lack of a duplexer. That means that if you don’t need automatic two-sided printing, you can save about $100 by getting the 6600/N. But before you buy it, be absolutely sure you don’t need to duplex. Xerox doesn’t offer an upgrade to let you add the feature later.

The printer’s paper handling is otherwise a match for its duplexing doppelgänger. It comes with both a 550-sheet drawer and 150-sheet multipurpose tray standard, which is enough for heavy-duty printing in a small office. If you need even more capacity, you can add a second 550-sheet drawer ($299) for a total of 1,250 sheets. Not so incidentally, the 550-sheet capacity for the drawers is a welcome convenience. It lets you refill the drawer with an entire ream of paper even before it’s fully empty.

Setup and Speed
As you’d expect for any printer with this level of paper capacity, the Phaser 6600/N is too big to comfortably share a desk with, at 15.1 by 16.9 by 19.2 inches (HWD). It also weighs a touch over 56 pounds, which makes moving it into place a two-person job for most. Once in place, however, setup is both simple and typical for a color laser.

Connection options include the expected Ethernet and USB ports, with an optional Wi-Fi adapter ($99) also available. The only mobile printing support is for AirPrint, which requires a Wi-Fi access point on your network, whether you connect the printer itself by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. I connected the printer by its Ethernet port and ran my tests from a Windows Vista system.

Xerox rates the printer at 36 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color, which is the speed you should see when you’re printing files that require little to no processing. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), it came in at a much slower 4.5 ppm. That’s essentially a tie with the Xerox 6600/DN, which came in at nearly the same speed for both duplex and simplex modes.

As a point of comparison, the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN$350.00 at Amazon was faster even in duplex mode, at 5.2 ppm, and much faster in simplex mode, at 6.5 ppm. Less important for an office printer, but still worth pointing out, is the fact that the 6600/N was unusually slow for a color laser for photos, averaging 45 seconds for a 4 by 6 in our tests.

Output Quality
Given speed that’s best described as tolerable but a little slow, it helps a lot that the output quality is good enough to be worth waiting for. Text is at the low end of the range where the vast majority of color lasers fall, but that’s still good enough for any business use. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may also consider it acceptable for moderately serious desktop publishing. Graphics quality is on par for a laser, making it more than good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo output on plain paper was at the high end of the range you can expect from a color laser. If you mounted most of the color photos from my tests in a frame behind glass, you’d have trouble telling that they weren’t true photo quality and printed on photo paper. I would rate the photos, along with the text and graphics, as good enough for printing your own marketing materials like tri-fold brochures or one-page handouts and mailers.

The Xerox Phaser 6600/N’s strongest points are its paper handling and output quality. If you don’t need the high paper capacity, the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN will give you essentially the same output quality with faster speed for $150 less. If you need the high paper capacity plus duplexing, the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN is the obvious alternative. If you print enough to take advantage of the high capacity, however, but you don’t need duplexing, and especially if you need high-quality output, the Xerox Phaser 6600/N could easily be the right printer for your office.

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Xerox Phaser 6500/DN

BY M. DAVID STONE

Theoretically identical to the Xerox Phaser 6500/N$318.16 at pcRUSH.com, but with a print duplexer (for two-sided printing) added and with a faster speed on our tests, the Xerox Phaser 6500/DN color laser printer ($499) delivers an impressive balance of speed, output quality, and paper handling, making it a potentially excellent fit in a micro office, small office, or workgroup, and an easy Editors’ Choice for color laser printers.

As with the 6500/N, an obvious point of comparison for the 6500/DN$362.62 at pcRUSH.com is the directly competitive Dell 2150cdn, which it replaces as Editors’ Choice. The three printers are similar in many ways, with all three built around the same engine and all three rated at 24 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color output. But where the Xerox 6500/N lacks the duplexer the Dell 2150cdn offers, the 6500/DN adds the duplexer and delivers faster speed as well. Note, too, that the 6500/DN includes support for AirPrint, which Xerox has added to the 6500 series firmware since I tested the Xerox 6500/N.

The printer’s paper handling is easily enough for most micro or small offices or workgroups, with a 250-sheet tray, a one-sheet manual feed, and a duplexer standard. For heavier-duty needs, you can also add a second 250-sheet tray ($199), making the 6500/DN a good choice for moderate- to heavy-duty printing by small-office standards.

Setup and Speed
As is typical for the breed, the 6500/DN is too big to share a desk with comfortably, at 16.4 by 15.9 by 16.8 inches (HWD). It’s also heavy enough, at 40 pounds, so you’ll likely want some help moving it. Once in place, however, setup is standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a wired network, and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista. Note too that if you prefer to connect wirelessly you can add an external Wi-Fi option ($219).

The printer’s speed is both a key strong point and a pleasant surprise. Like many duplex printers, the 6500/DN’s driver installs to print in duplex by default, so the official speed for our tests is for two-sided printing. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’shardware and software for timing) I clocked it at 5.4 ppm.

That makes the 6500/DN essentially tied with the Dell 2150cdn, at 5.5 ppm. However, the Dell printer’s speed is for printing in simplex (one-sided) mode. When I set the 6500/DN to simplex, it came in significantly faster, at 6.5 ppm. Somewhat surprisingly, the 6500/DN in simplex mode was also significantly faster than the Xerox 6500/N, at 5.2 ppm. The difference was entirely due to the 6500/DN printing a PowerPoint file faster, which suggests it offers faster, more efficient processing for that file format.

Output Quality
The 6500/DN’s output quality isn’t as impressive as its speed, but it’s easily good enough for almost any work need. Text in my tests was at the low end of the range where the majority of color lasers fall, but even then, it’s high enough quality for almost any business use. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may consider it suitable for moderately serious desktop publishing. Graphics quality was on par for a color laser, making it suitable for anything up to, and including, PowerPoint handouts. Most people would consider it good enough for marketing materials like one-page handouts or trifold brochures.

Photo quality on plain paper was at the high end of a tight range where most color lasers fall. If you mounted the color photos in our tests in a frame behind glass, they could pass for true photo quality.

Note that the Dell 2150cdn offers somewhat higher output quality, particularly for text, and it may still be your preferred printer if your primary need is absolutely top-tier quality. Alternatively, if you can do without a duplexer, the Xerox 6500/N will give you very similar capability to the 6550/DN. As already discussed, however, it was slower than the 6500/DN in our tests. And for most offices today, the lack of a duplexer can be a significant liability, which is why the 6500/DN earns a higher rating.

All told, the Xerox Phaser 6500/DN’s balance of speed, output quality, paper handling, and price makes a compelling argument for the printer, and the combination is enough to make this color laser printer an Editors’ Choice.

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Xerox Phaser 3610/N

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically the same printer as the Xerox Phaser 3610/DN Printer$621.41 at pcRUSH.com that I recently reviewed, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer offers all the same features except one. Unlike the DN model, the 3610/N doesn’t duplex (print on both sides of the page). If you need to duplex, or even think you might need to duplex, ever, that rules the 3610/N out, especially since you can’t add a duplexer to it as an upgrade. If you’re sure you’ll never need to duplex, however, it will give you all the same capability as the DN model otherwise at a slightly lower price.

Like its duplexing near twin, the 3610/N is designed as a workhorse mono laser for a small to mid-size office or workgroup. Aside from the lack of a duplexer, it’s particularly strong on paper handling, with a 550-sheet main tray and 150-sheet multipurpose tray standard, and the option to add up to three additional 550-sheet trays ($199.99 direct each) for a maximum 2,350 sheets. It lacks any output options, like a finisher or stacker, but the input capacity is enough for heavy-duty use by small to mid-size office standards.

Setup and Speed
The printer measures 12.4 by 15.5 by 16.8 inches (HWD) with its standard complement of trays, and it weighs in at 28.7 pounds, which makes it light enough for one person to move into place. Beyond that, setup for the 3610/N is typical for the category. I connected it to a wired network for my tests and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. You can also connect by USB, with Wi-Fi available as an option ($99.99 direct).

Xerox rates the 3610/N at 47 pages per minute (ppm), which should be close to the speed you’ll see with text or other files that don’t require much processing. On our tests, however, I clocked it at 12.0 ppm (usingQualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing). That’s a tie with the 3610/DN in simplex (single-sided) mode and a little faster than the 3610/DN in its default duplex mode, at 11.1 ppm.

Unfortunately, both printers are a little slow for the price and engine rating. The Editors’ Choice Dell B3460dn$649.99 at Dell Small Business, came in at 15.3 ppm, for example, and the less expensive Editors’ Choice Dell B2360dn$249.99 at Dell hit 15.0 ppm.

Output Quality and Other Issues
The good news is that as with the Xerox 3610/DN, the 3610/N largely makes up for its slow speed by offering somewhat better than par output quality overall.

Text quality is good enough for virtually any business need, which, for most offices, is the most important quality issue for a mono laser. Graphics quality is at the high end of par, making it easily good enough for any internal office use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, it’s also potentially good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photo quality is easily above par for a mono laser. Many people would consider it good enough for photos on output like one-page handouts with photos.

Also on the plus side for the 3610/N is a low claimed running cost, at 1.7 cents per page, and several potentially useful conveniences, starting with mobile printing.

The mobile printing support includes printing through the cloud and printing over Wi-Fi from an iOS or Android phone or tablet. To use either feature, the printer has to be connected to your network. In addition, the network needs to be connected to the Internet for cloud printing, and you need an access point on the network for printing over Wi-Fi. Adding the Wi-Fi option to the printer doesn’t eliminate the need for an access point, since the optional Wi-Fi doesn’t support Wi-Fi Direct.

Two other noteworthy convenience features are private printing (which Xerox calls secure printing), and the ability to save jobs in the printer. With private printing, you can send a job to the printer, and it won’t print until you enter a PIN code through the front panel menu. This can be handy if you’re printing something you don’t want others to see.

Saving jobs to the printer lets you store pages, like forms that need to be filled in repeatedly, so you can print them quickly and easily with front panel commands. Note that with the basic version of the printer, the forms are stored only in standard memory, however, so you’ll lose them if you turn the printer off. For the feature to be truly useful, you need to add the optional Productivity Kit ($349.99 list), which saves the files to non-volatile memory.

One minor issue is that the menus on the front panel aren’t as straightforward as they could be, making it hard to find some options quickly. However, you can easily print a Menu Map page, which shows you exactly how to navigate to the option you’re looking for.

As with its duplexing doppelganger, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer delivers on paper capacity, low running cost, better than par output quality, and convenience features like mobile printing and private printing. Not being able to add a duplexer later means that if you have any question about ever needing to duplex, you’ll be better off paying a little extra for the Xerox Phaser 3610/DN Printer, or an equivalent model that also has a duplexer. If you’re sure you’ll never need to duplex, however, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer is a more than reasonable choice.

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Xerox Phaser 6600/DN

BY M. DAVID STONE

Aimed at small offices or workgroups with heavy-duty print needs, the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN$570.00 at DocumentIO offers capable paper handling as one of its best features. Add in the on par or better output quality across the board, including for photos, and it’s a particularly good fit if you need a color laser to print a lot of pages, and also need the output to look good.

Color lasers in this price range have stiff competition in the form of the Editors’ Choice HP Officejet Pro X551dw Printer$580.07 at GoComputerSupplies.com, a laser-class inkjet. But lasers in general, and the 6600/DN in particular, still have an edge on color quality compared with the X551dw. They also have the advantage of there being no way that the output can smudge or smear if it gets wet. Depending on your needs and tastes, these two differences alone may make a laser the better pick.

The 6600/DN also offers somewhat better paper handling than the X551dw, with a 550-sheet drawer, 150-sheet multipurpose tray, and duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. The 550-sheet drawer is a particularly nice touch, since it lets you refill the drawer with an entire ream of paper even before it’s fully empty. And if you need still more capacity, you can add a second 550-sheet drawer ($299 direct) for a total 1,250 sheets. Not so incidentally, if you don’t need duplexing, Xerox also sells the Phaser 6600/N ($549 direct), which Xerox says is the identical printer minus the duplexer.

Setup and Speed
As you might expect simply from the paper capacity, the 6600/DN is too big to comfortably share a desk with, at 15.1 by 16.9 by 19.2 inches (HWD). It’s also heavy enough, at 56 pounds, so most people would consider moving it into place a two-person job. Once you find a spot for it, however, setup is simple and absolutely typical for a color laser. For my tests, I connected it to a wired network and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista.

Xerox rates the printer at 36 pages per minute (ppm) for both color and monochrome in simplex (one sided) mode. You should see that speed or close to it when printing text files with little or no formatting. However, the printer installs to print in duplex mode by default, which drops the rating to 24 ppm. And because we run our business applications suite with the default settings as shipped, our official test is for the duplex setting and slower speed. Beyond that, as with virtually all printers, the 6600/DN is much slower than its top speed on our tests, because we include photos and graphics that take time to process.

Xerox Phaser 6600/DN

On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), I clocked the printer at an effective 4.6 ppm. I also ran an unofficial test in simplex mode and got essentially the same speed. In either case, the speed falls in a tolerable range, but is a little slow for the price. The HP Officejet Pro X551dw, for example, came in at 9.2 ppm, and the Brother HL-4570CDW$379.99 at OfficeMax managed 6.8 ppm. In addition, the 6600/DN was unusually slow for a laser for photos, averaging 48 seconds for a 4 by 6.

Output Quality
Largely making up for any points the printer loses for speed is its overall output quality. Text and graphics are both dead on par for a color laser. That makes the text easily good enough for any business need, and arguably good enough for moderately serious desktop publishing applications, depending on how critical an eye you have. The graphics, similarly, are easily good enough for any business use up to and including good-quality PowerPoint handouts. Most people would also consider them good enough for marketing materials like one-page handouts or mailers.

Photos in my tests were above par, and just short of consistently true photo quality. More than half of the photos in our test suite were high enough quality so if you mounted them in a frame behind glass, they’d pass for the level of quality you’d expect from typical drugstore prints. Outside of a frame, only the fact that they’re printed on plain paper gives them away. However other photos could only pass for photo quality at a quick glance from a distance. Overall, most people would consider the photos, along with the graphics, as good enough for printing your own marketing materials.

The Xerox Phaser 6600/DN’s strongest points are clearly its paper handling and output quality. The one other sweetener that demands mention is that Xerox includes one year of onsite service in the base warranty. If you want a speed demon, you’ll need to look elsewhere, but if you don’t mind the slower speed, the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN can be an excellent fit for a small office or workgroup that needs a heavy-duty workhorse with high-quality output.

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Xerox, McAfee Demo Industry-First Method for Protecting Print Devices, Data from Malware

LAS VEGAS — Today Xerox (NYSE: XRX) and McAfee revealed new protection against malware and viruses with the first networked multifunction printer to use McAfee Embedded Control software, a sophisticated filtering method that allows only approved programs to get through. And while malware threats are most often associated with personal computers, Xerox demonstrated to attendees at the McAfee FOCUS 12 security conference that any networked device is vulnerable.

“When a multifunction device receives data and processes it for printing, copying, scanning or faxing, it becomes susceptible to malware attacks – a susceptibility that often is overlooked,” saidTom Moore, vice president, Embedded Security, McAfee.

The Xerox and McAfee security solution simplifies processes for IT administrators with software embedded into a multifunction device’s controller (the machine’s main onboard computer) to provide an immediate alert and audit trail to track and investigate the time and origin of security threats – and take appropriate action. This eliminates the need for IT administrators to constantly stay on top of malware threats and proactively block them.

Climax Portable Machining and Welding Systems, a company looking to expand into global markets, is testing the technology. “As we expand we recognize that we will increase our exposure to viruses and malware,” said David Richardson, the company’s network administrator. “Adding McAfee technology to our Xerox equipment is critical to protecting our intellectual property as we integrate multiple sites and systems around the world.”

Survey data from Xerox and McAfee underscores the need for embedded security in networked printers and multifunction devices. In a poll of office workers taken earlier this year, more than half (54 percent) say they either don’t always follow their company’s IT security policies (33 percent) or aren’t even aware of the policies (21 percent) – leaving the security of customer credit card numbers, financial reports, and human resource and tax documents at risk. The survey also showed 39 percent of employees who copy, scan or print confidential information at work say they wonder (at least sometimes) whether the information on a networked device will remain secure.

“IT administrators don’t always consider printers as a threat – and with the Embedded Control software, we’ve put up even more defenses in our products so they don’t have to,” said Rick Dastin, president, Xerox Office and Solutions Business Group.

Xerox devices protected and managed by McAfee Embedded Control and McAfee Embedded Management software will become available in 2013, with products in the Xerox WorkCentre® and ColorQube® product lines.

For more information about the Xerox partnership with McAfee, along with videos and images, visit http://www.xerox.com/security.

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