Printing and packaging companies have long considered themselves manufacturers — and they are. But as customer data increasingly lives in a digital environment rather than in physical files, brands are expecting their print service providers (PSPs) to keep their data secure.
Artificial intelligence has only intensified that expectation, says Amy Servi-Bonner, vice president, consulting, Applied AI & Printing Technology for PRINTNG AI.
“AI automation, portals, [and] integration have now moved customer data farther than ever before — and often before anyone stops to ask where the data lives, who touches it, or how it’s protected,” Servi-Bonner says. “Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Your customers already assume that you have answers to these questions, even if your organization really hasn’t caught up yet. And that’s why AI and cybersecurity are no longer IT conversations. They’re trust conversations, sales conversations, and revenue conversations.”
Servi-Bonner and other experts shared their insights on the current state of cybersecurity in the printing industry during a webinar entitled “AI Changes the Rules: Why Cybersecurity Is Now a Sales Requirement for Print Providers.”
Greater Threats to Security
Christian Quinn, managing principal at Fulcrum Innovation, offered a broader perspective on cybersecurity and AI. As a leader with deep experience with cyber investigations and cybersecurity on the national, state, and municipal levels, Quinn stresses that AI has made cyberattacks harder to identify.
“The fraud isn’t more technically complex, just the social engineering part of it is way more convincing,” Quinn says. “And the problem with that, from a human standpoint, is those normal red flags that we would look at — that which is weird but plausible, if you will, that raise our spidey senses — we’re not spotting those as easily. It becomes very simple to rationalize things away, so we have a reduced effort to enter into the threat environment.”
Because of this, Quinn says the bar for bad actors to be effective has been significantly lowered.
Read the rest of this story on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
