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Ricoh has another security vulnerability
- Research published by CVE bulletin
- Apparently an issue with the MP305 series that allows hackers to execute arbitrary code using SNMP
Ricoh announces price increase
- Ricoh’s headquarters in Japan announced it will be increasing pricing due “to the global shortage of semiconductors and soaring energy and raw material costs”
- Goes into effect on 4/1/2023
- Apparently, there will be a 10% increase in price of all A4 and A3 mainframes, but will not impact options and consumables
Disconnect regarding workplace experience
- Survey results from Opinium Research
- 72% of decision makers say they design employee workplace processes and systems with employee experience in mind
- 58% of employees believe that decision makers take into account employee experience
- 36% of workers report that new technology being introduced across their organization will not affect their work
- 30% of employees cite working conditions and employee experience as a reason to stay with their current employer
- 32% do not currently use productivity and project management software
- 34% do not use automation software
- 30% do not use hybrid meeting technology
- 64% of employees say that could bring more value to their company with the right technologies and tools
Xerox to display PPS at upcoming trade show
- Will have large booth at the Hunkeler Innovation Days in Lucerne, Switzerland
- Will be conducting demonstrations at:
- Baltoro HF Inkjet system
- Iridesse Production Color system
- FreeFlow Vision and Predictive Analytics solutions
- CareAR Assist Service Management Software
- XMPie variable data solutions
Printing shipments up
- The US Commerce Dept. stated that December 2022 printing shipments came in at $6.97 billion, down from November’s $7.10 billion
- However, for all of 2022, shipments were $83.47 billion, up from $82.05 billion in 2021
HP details success of PageWide presses
- Announced that customers of its PageWide production color inkjet presses have produced some 825 billion pages since they were introduced
- New enhancements include:
- High HDNA quality at full speed
- Top speed of 152mpm/500fpm
- 50% increase in speed in high quality mode
- Automation advancements
- Advanced color suite that allows creation of ICC profiles
Canon launched the ProStream 3000 series
- High speed, web-fed production color inkjet systems
- Model# 3080 offers up to 80 meters per minute
- Model# 3133 offers up to 133 meters per minute
- Web width up to 22”
- Page lengths up to 60”
- Top speed of 436 feet per minute, or 11,300 4/4 B2 sheets per hour or 62 million A4 pages
- Supports up to 300gsm
- Supports offset coated gloss, silk, matte, uncoated and inkjet optimized
- Air flotation technology throughout paper path
- Advanced air impingement turn bar
- 1200x1200dpi
- Uses piezo crystal inkjet printhead technology
- 2 to 5 picoliter ink droplet size
- Uses polymer pigment inks
- Inline Quality Control camera system to provide automatic print quality assurance
- New drying and cooling units
Dealer acquisition/merger update
- Fujifilm of Japan announced it has acquired MicroChannel
- A managed IT services company that serves Australia, New Zealand and Singapore
- Doing Better Business Inc. (DBB) announced it has acquired Cooper Business Machines, Inc., headquartered in Erie, PA
- DBB is headquartered in Altoona, PA, and has 9 locations covering Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia
- Fisher’s Technology, headquartered in Boise, ID, announced it has acquired Alter Enterprise, a managed IT/voice services dealer in Missoula, Montana
- Fishers has Montana offices in Kalispell, Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Bozeman & Billings
- Docugraphics of Charleston, SC it has acquired Custom Cloud Solutions, a managed IT services provider in Columbia, SC
- Atlantic, Tomorrow’s Office, headquartered in New York, announced it has acquired ACP Technologies, a managed IT services firm with offices in New York and Texas.
- Dataflow Business Systems, Inc. (DBS) announced it has acquired Connected Document Solutions, a Ricoh dealer in Sacramento, CA
- DBS is a Ricoh dealer headquartered in Salina, CA
Signs of recession?
- American Car Center informed its employees that it was closing its doors
- Day after it pulled a $222 bond sale from the market
- Has 288 employees at its headquarters in Memphis, TN
- Operates 40 automotive dealerships across 10 states
- Wall Street Journal article on debt of Millennials (people born from 1981 to 1996)
- Millennials in their 30s have seen their total debt load rise 27% to $3.8 trillion
- US credit card debt rose $61 billion in 4th quarter of 2022
- Largest increase in history
- Total credit card balance of $986 billion
- National childcare costs average between $9,000 and $9600 annually
- Cox Automotive published report:
- Average new vehicle price now at record high of $49,507
- Auto loan interest rates have risen to a 20 year high
- Median number of weeks of income needed to buy the average new vehicle increased to 44 weeks
- Auto loan balances increased by $28 billion in the 4th quarter
- National Association of Realtors reports:
- Median monthly US mortgage payment on median home is $1959.00
- Median US household has to shell out 42$ of their monthly income to make median mortgage payment
- Higher than any month between 2006 and 2021
- LendingClub published report:
- 60% of all adults, including 45% of high-income earners, are living paycheck to paycheck
- Consumer spending up 1.8% during last month
- Credit card debt hit a record of $930.6 billion, up 18.5% YoY
- Average credit card balance rose to $5,805
- Total household debt up 2.4% to $16.9 trillion in 4th quarter
- 46% of credit cardholders carry debt from month to month on at least one card, up 39%
- Mortgage Bankers Association reported:
- Mortgage demand plummeted to 28 year low
- Mortgage rates now average 6.71% for 30 year plan
- Existing home sales feel for 12th consecutive month, down 36.9% YoY
- Christopher Waller, member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors stated:
- Inflation could lead the Fed Reserve to raise interest rate higher in coming months than it has previously forecast
- Is in favor of raising rate to a range between from 5% to 5.5%, up from the current 4.6%
- “the recent data indicate that we have not made as much progress as we thought”
- Economist Nouriel Roubini recently interviewed:
- “Now we are facing the perfect storm: inflation, stagflation, recession, and a potential debt crisis”
- “I do believe that a stagflationary crisis is going to emerge this year”
- Believes that Fed Reserve needs to lift rates “well above” 6% to reduce inflation
- HP’s CEO, Enrique Lores stated; “Looking ahead, we are not expecting a significant economic recovery during fiscal year 2023”
- General Motors Corp. announced it is cutting an unspecified number of workers globally in order to slash costs to remain competitive
- “You have 40% more total production costs when we make an electric vehicle compared to a conventional (gas powered) vehicle. So what we do with this 40%? It is a big amount of money. You can not pass it to the consumer”
- Ford Motor Company announced it will shed 3,000 salaried jobs and 3,800 jobs in Europe.
HP posts earnings for last quarter
- Total sales down 18.8% to $13.8 billion
- Printer/MFP division sales down 4.5% to $4.6 billion
- Supplies revenue down 6.9% to $2.86 billion
- Commercial hardware revenue up 1.6% to $1.056 billion
- Office hardware revenue up 13%
- Pages per device are 80% of pre-pandemic levels
- Consumer hardware revenue down 3.5% to $699 million
- Total printer/MFP hardware units up 2%
- Commercial hardware units down 8%
- Consumer hardware units up 3%
- Consumer PC sales down 36%
- Commercial PC sales down 18%
- Operating profit margins contracted 240 basis points in PC business
- Margins up 80% in printer business
- Operating margin down from 8% to 5.5%
- Net earnings down 55.2% to $487 million
Report on threat of using Chinese tech
- The China Tech Threat was published pointing out the dangers posed by China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which requires Chinese down companies to hand over to the Chinese Communist Party any all data it demands
- Examples of Chinese-owned companies include Lenovo, Hikvision, DJI and Lexmark/Ninestar
- “Lexmark has long been the subject of various reports regarding cyber threats and espionage risk”
- “sensitive data can be access through various software vulnerabilities in the printer, making sensitive documentation visible to adversaries and foreign actors”
Riso wins production print contract
- Award from the One Florida Chapter of the American Red Cross
- Installed new Riso ComColor production color inkjet system
- Used primarily to produce health and safety programs
Taiwan firm to enter US with new MFPs?
- Avision of Taiwan, has facilities in China, Germany and Brazil and US
- Primarily a manufacturer of desktop scanners, shipping 25 million in its history, most of which are relabeled by a number of OEM partners
- Claims it has invested $100 million in R&D to develop its own b/w laser print engine technology
- Plans on launching its first color laser model in early 2024
- Is looking to grow its business in the U.S. by either finding an OEM partner, or dealers in the U.S. who wish to put their own label on the devices
- Possibly up to 40 different MFP and printer models (A3/A4)
- Claims it has reached an agreement with one manufacturer to relabel the products
- “We are looking for long term partnerships with any vendor that fits”
IDC reports on hardcopy device sales
- Data on the 4th quarter of 2022 for worldwide sales of printers and MFPs, including home and office use
- Hardcopy peripherals market grew 11.6% to nearly 25 million units in terms of shipments in the fourth quarter of 2022.
- Shipment value of hardcopy peripherals increased 14.8% percent to $11.1 billion
- For full year of 2022, hardcopy peripherals market declined 1.4%
- Value of hardcopy peripherals market rose 0.7% to $39.9 billion in 2022.
CYBERSECURITY & HEALTHCARE VERTICAL NEWS
Healthcare needs help moving from fax
- Article published in Bloomberg News
- 70% of healthcare providers still exchange PHI (protected health information, aka patient medical info) by fax
- Extended care segment, aka nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities, rely heavily on fax to share PHI
- Fax is used instead of traditional scan-to-email, as unsecure and not HIPAA compliant
- “To get fax machines and other antiquated tools out of health care, we will need new tools focused on the moments of communication and collaboration where the fax machine currently plays a role”
- Faxes are still routinely exchanged between hospitals and health care providers
- It is not unusual for a healthcare provider to print off records from their EHR (electronic health records software) and fax them to another healthcare provider
- Those who receive the faxed PHI now face the task of extracting the information manually from the faxed PHI for manual data entry into the EHR
- Not unusual for a faxed record to exceed 200 pages
- “Just last week we received faxed medical records for a patient that made a stack two inches thick. It came in two or three different faxes, because they ran out of paper halfway through, and it was all disorganized, and there were missing sheets. It was a mess”; stated Subha Airan-Javia, a hospitalist with Penn Medicine of Pennsylvania
- “And there I was, trying to put all this information together, it was like sorting through a year’s worth of credit card information for 20 different cards, and being expected to immediately balance your checkbook and know how much you have in every account, right now. It is just about impossible”
- (Help your healthcare customers move away from fax using the Konica Minolta Healthcare MFP, powered by Kno2, to share PHI via Direct Messaging instead of fax)
Vyne Software wins solution contract
- Award from Cleveland Clinic Mercy Hospital of Canton, Ohio
- Installed Trace software solution to scan and auto-index inbound faxed PHI
- Incorporates information into fields in the patient chart in the EHR
- Uses machine learning to recognize common entry fields
- Artificial intelligence used to read data and automatically populate forms with data
Epic announces expansion
- The largest provider of EHRs (electronic health records systems, is headquartered in Verona, Wisconsin
- Is in process of building two new “wizard” building on its campus that will have a Harry Potter-like look and feel
- Will hire 1,700 new employees for the buildings, which will have 60,000 square feet of space and 700 private offices
Managed IT firm wins cyber contract
- Sapphire Health, a healthcare managed IT services firm in New Orleans, LA, wins contract from LCMC Health of Louisiana
- LCMC had recently suffered a cyber attack, so awarded contract to deploy a ransomware recovery solution for its Epic EHR
eClinicalWorks wins EHR contract
- Award from De Baca Family Clinic
- Located in Fort Sumner, NM
Ricoh to sell output from Stratasys 3D printers
- Stratasys, headquartered in Eden Prairie, MN, announced it signed a new agreement with Ricoh
- Ricoh will resell the output from Stratasys 3D printers that produce anatomic models for healthcare providers
- Clinicians from Ricoh’s healthcare customers will submit medical scans, which are then converted into 3D print files, output on Stratasys 3D printers, and then returned to the clinicians.
HIPAA/cybersecurity breaches in the news
- The White House stated it is giving U.S. federal agencies 30 days to delete TikTok app from all government issued mobile devices, due to fears that the Chinese government could use the Chinese app to steal data.
- Russell County Hospital of Kentucky stated that it will spend $2.5 million to implement solution to protect itself from future ransomware attacks.
- The federal government published warning to the healthcare industry about new attacks from the MedusaLocker ransomware hackers.
- DNA Diagnostic Centers, headquartered in Fairfield, Ohio, was fined $400,000 for exposing the PHI of 46,000 patients.
- Hutchinson Clinics, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, notified an unknown number of patients that their PHI was exposed after cyber attack.
- Minneapolis Public Schools of Minnesota notified an unknown number of students that their info was exposed after ransomware attack.
- Evergreen Treatment Services of Seattle, WA, notified 21,325 patients that their PHI after cyber attack.
- Stanford University of California notified 897 students that their info was exposed after cyber attack in its Economics Department.
- True Health, a health insurance company in New Mexico, notified 63,000 patients that their info was exposed after ransomware attack.
- Los Angeles Unified School District of California notified 2,000 students that their info was exposed ransomware attack.
- Pipefitters Local 537 Union Health of Massachusetts notified 3,000 members that their PHI may have been exposed after cyber attack.
- Apple announced fixes to prevent hackers from exploiting a flaw that allows them to access images and messages on iPhones.
- GoodRx agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle allegations of negligence regarding breach that exposed PHI of an unknown number of patients.
- 90 Degree Benefits of Wisconsin notified 172,450 members that their info was exposed after a data breach.
- Bridgewater-Raritan Regional School District of New Jersey notified 3,909 students that their info was exposed after a cyber attack.
- U.S. Marshals Service notified an unknown number of people that their info may have been exposed after a cyber attack.
- Dish Network, who provides satellite TV/internet service, notified an unknown number of customers that their info may have been exposed after a cyber attack.
- Community Health Systems, headquartered in Franklin, TN, notified 1 million patients that their PHI may have been exposed after recent cyber attack.
- Lubbock Heart & Surgical Hospital of Texas notified 23,379 patients that their PHI was exposed after ransomware attack.
- The Chautauqua Centers of New York notified 747 patients that their PHI was exposed after breach.
- Luis Alberto Garcia Perojo, 42, of Boca Raton, Florida, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida to attempting to sell more than 2.6 million stolen Medicare identities
- faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison
- Chick-fil-A, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, notified 71,000 customers that their info was stolen after recent cyber attack.
- Tennessee State University of Nashville, TN, notified 8,000 students that their info was exposed after ransomware attack.
- Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA notified an unknown number of students that their info was exposed after ransomware attack.
- The City of Modesto in California notified an unknown number of citizens that their info was exposed after ransomware attack.
- White Settlement Independent School District of Texas notified 3,000 students that their info was exposed after ransomware attack
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