Printer Best Practices

Printers often handle RIT Confidential information. The following are best practices to secure any printers within the RIT network that you support.

• Update the firmware.
   
• Assign a password for web access to the printer.
   
• Change the SNMP community strings. These are the equivalent of printer passwords. Public and private are the defaults.
   
• Disable any unused protocols.
   
• If possible, change the default TCP port from 9100 to another port number. Specific exploits target the default port and may cause the printers to print blank pages. However, some printers may not be capable of changing this port number.
   
• If you have a firewall in front of your printers, only allow trusted IPs to talk directly to the printer.
   
• Disable FTP, or assign a password.
   
• If the printer is only used for on-campus printing, consider changing it to a private net 10 IP address. This is a good security measure to prevent malicious attacks from the Internet. If you need assistance enabling this, please contact RIT Service Center at 585-475-5000 or visit help.rit.edu