Printing Security – Who’s Reading Your Documents?

Printing Security – Who’s Reading Your Documents?

I love the comic strip Dilbert  and a recent strip that landed in my mail box perfectly applied to some of the challenges we face with printing today.

While I got a good laugh out of the strip, it also hit on a real issue with printing. Security. In general, shared printers in offices require you to print something and then retrieve it at the nearest local printer. If someone reaches the printer before you they could, potentially, look at any of the documents you’ve printed.. Sometimes, to combat this businesses will have shared printers, but departments that deal with sensitive information (think HR) might have their own printer they share among them. The problem with this is there are still ways for people to access this information.

While attending Western Kentucky University and I saw printing evolve. At first in the computer labs you would print something and the workers at the front of the computer lab would pull it out and set it on a table where it would remain until you picked it up. The problem was many times people printed stuff they didn’t need and there was no way to regulate if the person picking up the print job was the one who printed it. Eventually a cover page printed out with your job that had your name on it. Now you knew if you were picking up your job, but there was still no way to ensure that the person picking up the job was the same as the name on the paper and paper was wasted to make this cover page. By the time I  graduate  they had developed a much more efficient system, which entailed using and ID access card to retrieve any of my print jobs.

I selected which one I wanted and it printed; after a set amount of time, if I didn’t print a job it was erased. I no longer had to worry that anyone would see what I was printing, that someone would pick up my print job, or worry when I accidentally hit print instead of save. There are many benefits to utilizing pull printing. Businesses could reduce the number of printers to a greater extent, because certain departments would not need their own printer due to privacy issues. Organizations would be able to reduce the number of “accidental” or unnecassay print jobs. Also reducing the jobs that are often forgotten–you know, those papers that are just stacked on top of the printer waiting for their owner to pick them up.

The problem with all of this is that only roughly 15% – 20% of devices under an MPS contract utilize this. I guess I have to ask why?

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