Discussion on:

Office copiers pose identity theft risk

I worked at a place where we logged outgoing fax data inside the machine. We discovered insider IP theft this way, someone had faxed info to a competitor they had worked for. Probably commercial machines can save the faxes too, so someone would be able to reprint anything you sent out.

What is the procedure in your shop? Do you manage the data on a copy machine? Is your IT department responsible for securing this data?

we have multi function copiers which scan, fax, print etc. - I"m finding sensitive content on drives, which aren't smart enough to require authentication.

This surely is a vital security threat. A copier does not usually figure high in the risk analysis and is easily overlooked while doing risk assessments. Newer copiers are far more intelligent and surely capable to retaining data.
Yes, copier do pose risk.

Hard drives on copiers can retain scanned images from copy and scan operations. However, the partition that is used to store these images is usually not large enough to store very many pages (maybe 200-400 depending on model). When you consider an average copy count of on a small workgroup copier of 5-10k copies and prints per month, the image data that is stored is turned over quite often. Making blank copies only moves the images down the list of images to be removed. Of more concern would be the "mailbox" or storage functions for scanning and printing that will allow for images to be stored indefinitely on the hard drive of the copier. If you are disposing of a copier, a service tech can usually format the hard drive and reload system software to wipe out any data stored.