Negosentro|The Benefits of Secure Printing|Printing sensitive documents is common for business teams. However, it always raises a significant concern: what if someone else takes the document? Fortunately, secure printing solutions can help eliminate this concern. Learn more about what secure printing is, how it works and what its benefits are.
What Is Secure Printing?
In many office spaces, people share printers. They are often located remotely in central areas or copy rooms. This means that you may print something and need to walk over to the printer to pick it up. This can be an issue if the document is private or otherwise sensitive.
Secure printing offers a solution. It allows the person doing the printing to “pull” the document to the printer, eliminating the lag between printing and document pick up. In short, it is a more secure way to print sensitive documents.
How Does It Work?
Secure printing is quite simple. In a normal printing arrangement, the device sending the print job simply adds the file to the printer’s queue. As soon as the printer reaches the file in its queue, it prints the file. In most cases, this happens either while the person is walking to the printer or before he or she even gets up. In either case, the document is typically sitting in the printer tray upon arrival.
When using secure printing, an additional step is added to the process. Rather than putting the file straight into the print queue, it is held up by the printer. It is only added to the queue once the person printing has authorized it by indicating that he or she is at the printer and ready. These are the steps:
1. User initiates the print job.
2. System holds the print job waiting for authorization.
3. User walks to the printer. Once there, he or she swipes a badge or enters credentials.
4. The printer gets the print job and adds it to its queue.
5. The printer prints the file, ready to be picked up immediately by the user.
By adding the step of authorizing the print job at the printer, secure printing eliminates one of the most insecure steps in typical document handling. This process can be further improved by placing the printer in a secure area.
What Are the Benefits?
There are some great reasons to get a printing solution that allows secure printing. The following are just a few of the benefits:
· More Secure Document Handling: if you have documents that need to be carefully protected, they cannot be sitting on a shared printed tray. Using secure printing can help ensure that those documents aren’t exposed to unauthorized use or viewing. This can be especially important if you are subject to data-handling regulations such as HIPAA or PCI.
· Less Confusion: While shared printers are a cost and practical necessity for most offices, they can also be troublesome. People accidentally take the wrong pages, lose their print jobs, are unsure whether something printed and experience an array of other problems. Using secure printing can help to eliminate the confusion and reduce helpdesk calls.
· Reduced Cost: Secure printing means that your organization can use shared printers with less risk. Even HR personnel and other people handling sensitive files can use shared resources. Furthermore, people are less likely to double print or lose documents using secure printing. In other words, you can significantly cut down on your printing resource usage and costs.
· Greater Efficiency: Overall, printing causes people to be inefficient. They try to print something and realize they sent it to the wrong printer or forget a document and have to keep heading back and forth. Secure printing creates a clearer and more easily managed workflow. People interact with their print queues directly and have more control. This leads to greater efficiency.
Learn More
Discover more about the benefits of secure printing. Even if you do not print sensitive documents, this may be a helpful feature for your team.
Image Credit
