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ensuring they’re keeping up to date with new versions of software.”
Healthy channel But while there are threats to the print channel, it is nevertheless in a healthier place than it has been for some time, with many of the post-pandemic problems with the global supply chain being ironed out, according to Stuart. “The print channel has seen a good bump in sales in the last 12 months, or at least we have and that links back to the channel,” he says. “End users are looking to invest in and refresh their technology. There is increased availability of hardware to do that, and the channel has worked hard to capitalise on that. “More than ever, we’re seeing customers keen to understand and control their costs. They want to provide a solution for their end users, be they office based, remote or hybrid. That’s created opportunities for resellers to think differently about the ever-changing workforce and that gives opportunities for products like PaperCut’s, be that on-premise or in the cloud.” There is also an increase in short-term lease agreement extensions. “A lot of devices were sold in the run up to and during the early stages of the pandemic and those devices have still got a lot of mileage left in them,” says Stuart. “End user organisations realise that and now know they don’t need to churn and refresh hardware every three to five years, they can maximise the lifecycle of that with things like lease extensions and short- term maintenance and support extensions. “That’s where it’s imperative PaperCut works with the channel to make sure that we’re all supporting those customers and they’re looked after. Just because they’re not looking to refresh hardware doesn’t mean there’s not an opportunity to provide value add, topics such as making sure that
and that’s through combination of external penetration testing and working closely with security organisations and security professionals. “PaperCut is entering an era of security focused releases to ensure we stay ahead of those bad actors looking for vulnerabilities within print IT environments. Whilst we’re actively addressing the reported CVEs that we get, we’re also fully committed to a proactive security approach and that includes more frequent and stringent penetration testing and audits on all our products.” As an example of the threats facing all businesses in the print channel, PaperCut experienced two vulnerabilities earlier this year affecting two of its products. These were quickly patched and rectified, but there is a post-incident review ongoing now. “That’s in line with our security response process and we must learn from this incident and constantly evolve our own security processes and procedures to protect against this elevated threat that we see and the whole print industry sees as well,” says Steve. “One good thing that’s come out of all of this is we’ve strengthened our relationships with several security organisations to improve our security response plans. Over the past month we’ve been working closely with agencies that I don’t think we’d ever think of working with before, like the FBI and the CISA. There are a lot of learnings, but it’s been good to work with like-minded organisations that are committed to improving security response plans. “Ultimately, it’s about ensuring our customers are up to date as well as safe and that’s where we’re fully focused. “As cloud adoption accelerates there becomes less of an onus on customers and more of an onus on us as we seamlessly deploy security updates like any SaaS based software. But certainly, for customers it is
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As cloud
adoption accelerates there becomes less of an onus on customers and more of an onus on us as we seamlessly deploy security updates like any SaaS based software.
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