Between high-profile ransomware attacks and repeated data breaches, enterprise data security is in the headlines like never before. That means it’s also at the front of people’s minds like never before. Keeping data safe has quickly become a top priority for any organization that’s concerned about the privacy of its own information as well as its public reputation.

The importance of the print environment in all this hasn’t gone unnoticed. According to a 2019 report from Quocirca, close to two-thirds of organizations rank print as one of their top five security risks. And more than three-quarters of them are boosting their spending on network printing solutions that offer features like secure printing in order to help minimize data loss.

In most print environments, you’ll find three common vulnerabilities:

1. Central points of attack: With traditional print infrastructures like print servers, you’ve got one device handling printing for an entire pool of users. From a print security standpoint, that’s just the same as putting all your eggs in one basket. Hackers who want access to a rich pot of data can just target the job queues or caches on the print servers.

Furthermore, print servers’ single points of failure restrict print availability. When the server goes offline, so does printing.

2. Printed document exposure: So-and-so prints a personal email, gets distracted, and forgets to pick it up. Then someone else finds that printed email sitting in the printer’s output tray and just happens to read it, resulting in lots of embarrassment.

We’ve all seen something like that happen. Maybe we’ve been guilty of it ourselves. And what’s worse, sometimes it’s more than just a personal email. It could be private company memos or documents detailing serious HR shake-ups or top-secret products.

3. Lack of unified oversight: This can include everything from unpatched server software and out-of-date drivers to employees being able to print almost anything, including confidential documents, without risk of detection. Without the tools for comprehensive oversight, admins have limited ability to keep tabs on the state of the print environment and what’s happening across it.

If print security is so important, what’s the holdup?
With so many organizations at risk from one or more of these vulnerabilities, you’d think that they would be ramping up print security without skipping a beat. But increased security doesn’t necessarily come quick or easy.

For example, if you choose to implement secure printing, you’ll need some kind of secure release mechanism. That often involves rolling out more infrastructure at a time when everyone’s trying to find infrastructure reduction solutions.

There’s also the lingering issue with print servers. Unless you ditch your print servers for good, there’s no way to fully eliminate issues with single points of attack. You retain your single points of failure, too, which makes high-availability printing harder to achieve.

Print security with reduced infrastructure and high availability
PrinterLogic is unique among network printing solutions because it lets you have print security without sacrificing high-availability printing and also reduces infrastructure. It combines stable, straightforward direct-IP printing with centralized management to create a robust, secure serverless infrastructure.

So what does that look like on the ground?

• Eliminate print servers: PrinterLogic Web Stack (on-prem) and PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud) provide full-featured printing with zero need for print servers—even in large and distributed organizations. By getting rid of print servers, you remove all of their security and availability shortcomings in one fell swoop.
• Experience full oversight: A centralized admin console lets you manage and monitor every aspect of the print environment intuitively from a single pane of glass. The common driver repository makes it easy to keep drivers consistent and up to date across the organization.
• Audit print activity: PrinterLogic’s optional print auditing module can automatically generate reports and alerts. That allows admins to keep tabs on print activity and shine a light on previously dark corners of the print environment.
• Implement easy-to-use secure printing: Want secure printing that doesn’t annoy your end users? Among several other release mechanisms, PrinterLogic offers a Print Release App for iOS and Android. With the app, end users can securely execute pending print jobs right from their smartphones. Better still, it doesn’t require any extra infrastructure. And if you’ve got an existing badge or card system, great. PrinterLogic can integrate seamlessly with that too.

With PrinterLogic, you get the enterprise-grade security your organization needs to protect its print data. But it doesn’t stop with that. You also get infrastructure reduction and high-availability printing to boot.

Just look at how things went down with EPIC Management (read the case study here). Secure release printing is notoriously tough to implement in healthcare organizations. And yet, using PrinterLogic, EPIC Management was able to create a solid chain of custody for its protected health information (PHI) while also simplifying its print environment.

To see what it’s like to have print security with all the advantages and none of the tradeoffs, sign up for a PrinterLogic demo today. You can test it in your own print environment free of charge for 30 days.

Your enterprise years ago upgraded to Windows 7 and has been very happy since without any major issues. So why should you now migrate your users’ operating systems from Windows 7 to Windows 10, especially after you skipped the Windows 8 release? This blog will provide you four good reasons why you would be better off migrating your workforce to Windows 10.

1. Security
Of all the reasons that make Windows 10 a must-do upgrade, security is at the top of the list. But wait, you say, your enterprise has never had any security issues. While that statement may be accurate, it’s irrelevant. As they say in the investment industry: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” The fact that your organization has never suffered a serious cybersecurity breach (one that you know about, anyway) doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you today, with devastating results.

This is a fact: Windows 10 has far better built-in security features than Windows 7. In thinking about Windows 10 from a security perspective, Microsoft gained valuable experience from security flaws discovered in Windows 7. They have taken those lessons learned from Windows 7, and used them to make Windows 10 more secure. Now it’s true Microsoft has patched Windows 7 to fix many vulnerabilities, but it is still not nearly as secure as Windows 10. Here is why:

• As mentioned above, Windows 10 was designed from the ground up to be far more secure.
• The internal workings of Windows 10 are not the same as Windows 7.
• In developing Windows 10, Microsoft moved from a reactive to a proactive security posture. From Day 1, Windows 10 was specifically designed to function securely in the increasingly hostile and mobile computing world.
• Windows 7’s approach to security was patching known vulnerabilities. In Windows 10, security is designed into its core architecturally. For example, the Device Guard feature is a combination of enterprise-related hardware and software security features that, when configured together, will lock a device down so that it can only run trusted applications defined in your organization’s code integrity policies.

Windows is without a doubt the biggest target for hacking, ransomware and malware attacks. In a world where the bad guys have gone from individual aggressors and shady websites to “state” operated and funded hacking teams, the publicly and non-publicly known security holes in Windows 7 will continue to prove exploitable to attackers. Having adapted to the increasingly sophisticated techniques of these bad actors, the Microsoft security team has applied the knowledge it has gained over the past decade-plus to development of Windows 10.

2. User Experience
Windows 10 gives users increased productivity tools so they can work faster, better and safer. There are many of these features, but below is a short list:

Startup Speed—Check out the videos on YouTube comparing Windows 10 startup time to that of any other OS.

OneDrive On-Demand Syncing—In today’s enterprise office users rely heavily on cloud storage. They can keep their files in the cloud without using disk space and share them on demand as needed. With On-Demand Syncing these files are automatically backed up.

Voice Typing—Simply press Windows Key-H (for “hear”) and your PC starts typing what you say. Setup is nonexistent.

Nearby Sharing—A feature that is very similar to Apple’s AirDrop. Nearby Sharing increases user productivity by sharing files and documents directly with other users. It does so via Bluetooth or Wifi without the need for internet connection.

3. Support
Microsoft has ended support for Windows 7 and any new hardware running Windows 7 is not supported at all. Additionally, Windows 7 will reach an announced end of life in 2020. Conversely, Windows 10 has full support.

4. Performance
Windows 10 is a big improvement over performance limitations that were found in Windows 7. Windows 10 runs noticeably faster than Windows 7. In a business climate of “do more with less,” Windows 10 will empower your users with a tool to accomplish that. If your Windows 10-using workforce complains of computing performance limitations, those are most likely found somewhere other than the OS.

There you have it, four excellent reasons to migrate your workforce from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Delaying the inevitable will likely make it even more painful. Your workforce will most likely have a short period of adjustment to Windows 10. But once that passes and they see the performance improvements and enhanced user experience, they’ll thank you for the change.

One of the most common nuggets of wisdom in IT is to simplify. The more moving parts there are, the more possibilities there are for things to go wrong. The more complex your environment is, the harder it is to maintain and troubleshoot.

Honestly, though, sometimes simplifying is not so simple.

In the enterprise, there used to be two general choices when it came to IT printing solutions: direct IP or print servers.

Direct IP had the advantage of straightforward, reliable client-to-printer connections. Unfortunately, management in conventional direct IP print environments was anything but simple. Something as basic as a driver change meant that admins had to touch each workstation.

That’s why most large organizations ended up taking the print-server route. But it’s not like print servers are much simpler. Depending on how they’re implemented, print servers can create a massive expansion in print infrastructure. And while they do automate some aspects of print management, they create more work and hassle in other areas.

What’s so bad about print servers?
For starters, print servers are unreliable and costly to maintain. No matter how they’re deployed, they create single points of failure—which means that if they hang or crash, printing stops for all affected users.

And let’s face it, print servers crash or hang way more than they should. Driver issues, corrupt print jobs and software incompatibilities are just a few of the many things that can bring them down. Even if you discount the costs of upgrading print servers every few years, you’re still looking at a lot of time and money spent managing them.

Another drawback is that print servers limit management and functionality. Having to deploy printers with Group Policy or scripts? That’s so old school. Provisioning methods like those just slow login times or result in group policy conflicts. They also restrict who can deploy printers, increasing admins’ workload.

Last, but certainly not least, print servers make it hard to incorporate new features. If you want to add a feature like mobile printing to your environment, you’ve got to go shopping for dedicated IT print solutions that will layer on top of your print-server environment. That just ends up adding even more software and more hardware infrastructure.

To really simplify your print environment, you need to eliminate print servers altogether.

Doesn’t eliminating print servers remove print capabilities?
If you were to just throw your print servers out the window one day, there’s no doubt that you’d get the print infrastructure reduction you were hoping for. Not to mention a huge sense of relief. The downside is that no one would be able to print.

But we wanted the best of both worlds: powerful, intuitive printing alongside zero print servers. That’s why we developed PrinterLogic.

PrinterLogic gives your organization the ability to eliminate its print servers completely while also seeing incredible gains in areas like print manageability, stability, availability and flexibility. It’s unique among IT printing solutions because it combines the dependability of direct IP with the ease of centralized management. It redefines (and reduces) your print infrastructure because it totally rethinks what we should expect from enterprise printing.

Simplify and optimize enterprise printing with PrinterLogic
Rolling out mobile printing to any BYOD phone or tablet with minimal setup? Making full-featured secure pull printing possible with virtually any printer? Configuring advanced dynamic printer deployments without having to touch a single GPO or script? Built-in comprehensive print auditing? Letting end users safely install printers themselves? PrinterLogic does all that. Oh, and did I mention that it does so without a single print server?

Our newest product, PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud), takes print infrastructure reduction and turns it up to 11. It’s a SaaS solution for both large- and small-scale print environments that brings many of the same benefits as our on-prem software. Plus some of its own.

For example, like consolidated print servers, most cloud solutions rely heavily on the WAN. They don’t function properly without it. Not PrinterLogic SaaS. The direct-IP component means that end users keep printing as usual, even if there’s a WAN outage.

AAA Carolinas is just one of many, many examples of an enterprise-scale, distributed company that eliminated its printer servers through PrinterLogic (read the case study here). Today the organization deals with far fewer print-related helpdesk calls. It effortlessly delivers the right printers to mobile employees. And it’s shed well over half of the expensive hardware that used to take up space in its data centers.

The first step toward eliminating your print servers and redefining your print infrastructure is to sign up today for a free PrinterLogic demo. It’ll give you the chance to test drive our solution for 30 days and see how it turns even complex print environments into something streamlined, robust and feature-rich.

PrinterLogic 19.1 (formerly known as Printer Installer), adds comprehensive secure release printing for Canon MFPs, expanded scalability for enterprise authentication, Safari 12 (macOS Mojave) support, and dozens of other enhancements that will improve the experience for admins and end users.

Canon-certified Gen 2 CPA
We’re launching our second generation of control panel applications (CPAs) with one designed for Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE printers. The Canon CPA is based on our all-new Control Panel Platform. It’s available with our optional Pull Printing licensing, and provides secure-release printing that’s easier and faster than ever before. End users can launch the app on the printer’s display, view their pending print jobs, and quickly select the ones they want to print.

PrinterLogic’s new Control Panel Application for Canon MFPs has a clean, intuitive interface and offers three authentication methods—swiping a badge, Username/Password, or User ID/PIN.

The most noticeable advantage of the new CPA design is that it reduces wait times between authentication and printing by 50% or more. Loading the CPA is much faster, too. On the backend, from an admin’s perspective, CPA-related error messages offer more insight and there are improved troubleshooting tools.

A list of supported Canon printers is on our Control Panel Application Support page. Further Gen 2 CPAs will be released to support even more brands in the near future.

More scalable LDAP
Large organizations that make use of Active Directory (AD) will see a speed boost in PrinterLogic 19.1. The latest version is able to handle multiple organizational units (OUs) with ease, and it’s now possible to search across multiple domains. These developments also lay the groundwork for future integration with cloud-based identity services such as Okta, Azure AD, and Google ID.

Safari 12 support
In its most recent macOS release (Mojave, 10.14.x), Apple changed the way Safari browser extensions work. This was done primarily for security reasons. To address this shift in extension design from Apple, we’ve rewritten the Safari browser extension so it now complies with Apple’s latest standards, while maintaining PrinterLogic’s functionality and ease of use.

Updated Section 508 compliance
Version 19.1 includes updates to our compliance with U.S. Government Section 508 standards first introduced in version 18.1. The voluntary product accessibility standards (known as VPAT) have evolved since that release, which is why we’ve updated our solution to align with VPAT 2.x.

For more details on these features and the other enhancements in this release, you’ll find them in our PrinterLogic 19.1 release notes.

New product names reflect strength of PrinterLogic brand
We’re changing the name of Printer Installer to PrinterLogic Web Stack, and changing the name of PrinterCloud to PrinterLogic SaaS. These changes are more aligned with our company brand, and underscore our focus on a SaaS-oriented product line. Whether they’re running PrinterLogic as a service, or in their own datacenter, customers have come to trust PrinterLogic as a solution they rely on for true serverless printing.

If you haven’t tried PrinterLogic, what are you waiting for? You’re a trial install away from eliminating your print servers, saying goodbye to GPOs and scripts, and implementing advanced functionality like secure release and mobile printing. Sign up today for our demo and test PrinterLogic absolutely free for 30 days.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will enter its end-of-life (EoL) phase on January 14, 2020.

While some organizations have already migrated to later Windows versions in anticipation of the EoL deadline, a large number of them are still running Windows 7 as their secondary or even primary operating system. In June of 2019, the install base for Windows 7 was still estimated to be as high as 37%.

Like any operating system (OS) migration, moving your organization from Windows 7 to 10 will certainly involve its fair share of lifting and shifting. Followed, of course, by correcting any settings that might not have carried over or identifying the software that’s no longer fully compatible.

But here’s the good news: Migration isn’t something to dread! You can actually capitalize on Windows 10 migration as an opportunity to streamline your print environment, harden print security in your organization and generally make life easier for your fellow IT admins—not to mention your end users—from now on.

Making the most of Windows 10 migration
During a typical OS migration, the only real gain is slightly more up-to-date software. When all is said and done, you’re probably not going to see a huge return on investment. You’re still operating and maintaining the same amount of hardware. And in a few years’ time you can look forward to doing it all over again when Windows 10 reaches EoL.

PrinterLogic changes all that. Our serverless printing software offers a rare opportunity to turn a Windows 7 to 10 migration into ongoing savings in time, stress and costs. Here’s how:

Streamlined infrastructure
Instead of migrating multiple print servers as part of your Windows 10 transition, you can move every last one of them to a single instance of PrinterLogic’s serverless architecture.

By eliminating those print servers, you also remove the associated costs of managing, operating and maintaining them. You spare yourself the hassle of future migrations as well.

Simplified driver management
Migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is almost guaranteed to involve some 32- and 64-bit driver incompatibilities. Managing print drivers, especially different versions of the same one, can be confusing and inefficient with legacy enterprise printing solutions.

PrinterLogic features a common driver repository for the entire print environment. That makes it easy to identify, remove, update and assign print drivers for individual users or whole departments.

Increased security
One of the main reasons for migrating to Windows 10 is security. So why keep an outdated print infrastructure that’s vulnerable to single points of failure and easy attack vectors?

In combining direct-IP printing with centralized management, PrinterLogic gives admins at-a-glance oversight while putting malicious actors at a disadvantage. PrinterLogic’s optional secure pull printing also creates additional security for end users.

The net benefit of PrinterLogic
By using PrinterLogic to maximize your Windows 10 migration, you’re also getting a much bigger net benefit than a simple OS upgrade. The reduced infrastructure, more efficient print management and enhanced security that come along with PrinterLogic have the potential to generate serious cost savings in the long term.

And your users see the benefits too. Features like PrinterLogic’s self-service installation portal and mobile/BYOD printing make it easier for them to print—no matter what device they’re on or where they happen to be. That translates to fewer help-desk calls and less strain on IT.

Before you start your migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10, download a demo of PrinterLogic and test it totally free of charge for 30 days to see how it performs. And if you want to get even more flexibility out of your migration, test drive our enterprise-grade cloud-based solution, PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud).

Have you heard this story? One of your workforce wants to print out a document. They open it and click “Print.” Then they walk over to the printer.

No document.

So they walk back to their computer and do it again. But this time, their computer’s not finding the printer at all.

What gives? Here you both are, stuck wasting a bunch of time on something that should be dead simple. They can’t print, and IT has to figure out why. Isn’t printing one of those things that should have been figured out, like, forever ago?

When you’re dealing with print servers as your enterprise printing solution, situations like this are pretty common. Print servers can be kind of flaky. If they don’t like a particular print driver, they choke. If they don’t like a certain print job, they crash. And if they’re busy choking or crashing, they’re obviously not able to print documents for your workforce.

In IT-speak, we call this a problem with availability—as in, printers are not available to do the job they’re supposed to.

And here’s the deal: When print availability suffers, so does everything and everyone else. Employees get fed up with the whole frustrating game of “Did it print this time?” and take a coffee break instead. IT winds up with more support tickets to wrestle with. Customers get ticked off.

The perfect world that we’re all aiming for, then, is a highly available print environment. One that, you know, actually prints the files every time your workforce clicks “Print.”

Adding secure release to the mix
Now let’s say the organization has these underlying issues and then IT gets tasked to add a feature like secure printing on top of it.

For the folks in need of a refresher, secure printing (sometimes called secure release) is when an end user clicks “Print” and nothing happens. On purpose. Instead of printing out automatically, the job is held in a queue. Then when they physically go to the printer, they authenticate—swiping an ID card, for example, or entering a password on the printer’s screen. That authorization step is what executes their waiting print job.

That might sound like it complicates things, but it’s actually not much different from the regular printing process. I mean, they’re still walking to the printer, right? It’s also way more secure. With secure release, print jobs don’t end up sitting in the tray waiting to be picked up. Documents stay in the hands of the people who printed them in the first place.

But if the print server has decided to flake out, it goes without saying that secure printing isn’t going to work. Adding secure release to server-based enterprise printing solutions is like adding another layer to a bad cake that’s already started to wobble.

PrinterLogic lets you have your cake and eat it too
Our enterprise printing software doesn’t use servers to provide print functionality. It uses direct IP, which is basically like creating a straight line between the computer and the network printer. None of this print server middleman stuff.

At the same time, it also offers advanced features like secure printing. The unique thing about those advanced features is that they’re not just slapped on like cheap frosting on bad cake. Instead, they’re baked into the solution itself.

By removing the unstable servers and replacing them with direct IP, it means both IT and the end users get a highly available print environment. And by augmenting that with secure release, it means that end users get the ability to control where and when their print jobs actually print. That equals more uptime, more security, more productivity.

The real icing on the cake
What really sets PrinterLogic apart is that you don’t need to go out and buy a whole bunch of printers with secure release capabilities. Any network printer can be configured as a secure release printer.

That’s part of the reason why two very different organizations, the Northwest AEA (read the case study here) and EPIC Management (read the case study here), were so successful with their roll-out of PrinterLogic.

With PrinterLogic, you don’t even need to invest in a secure printing authorization system. We’ve got a brand-new built-in release app for Canon printers—with support for even more brands on the way. And our handy Print Release App lets iOS and Android users securely view and execute their print jobs right from their smartphones.

If you want secure release without having to compromise on high availability, sign up today and download a demo of our enterprise printing solution. It’s free to test for 30 days. We’re confident that there’s no better way than PrinterLogic to get maximum uptime along with improved security in your print environment.

Reduced costs, simplified management and improved security are just some of the reasons why organizations choose thin clients over traditional IT architectures. And thin-clients often deliver on those counts, because you’re talking about less expensive hardware and users’ interaction being managed through one pane of glass.

Where it gets tricky is with thin-client printing. The inexpensive hardware relies on a faraway data center to do most of the actual work. That means print jobs are always traveling at least one way across the main Internet connection (the WAN) to the local printer. Limiting end users’ freedom is fine for keeping them from accidentally installing viruses, but it’s not so great when they need to install new printers.

As for the efficiency of centralized management—well, all that efficiency can get lost when admins are struggling with Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and other complicated protocols to deploy printers. Or if they’re spending time dealing with printing support tickets.

How to succeed in thin-client printing without really trying
When you’ve got a thin-client environment, what you need is a thin-client solution. That sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many printing solutions try to force a shotgun wedding between legacy enterprise printing and modern thin-client environments.

That approach doesn’t work. You still end up stuck with extra infrastructure like print servers. You still have to mess with GPOs and scripts to deploy printers. You still have age-old problems with remote desktop printing like slow printing and heavy WAN usage.

To succeed in thin-client printing, it takes a solution like PrinterLogic. Our next-gen serverless printing infrastructure doesn’t try to replace remote desktop printing functionality with its own protocols. That just causes compatibility problems.

Instead PrinterLogic enhances the printing functionality that’s already there. To do that, PrinterLogic creates direct client-to-printer connections (aka direct IP) and introduces features like centralized printer management.

What exactly does that look like?

• PrinterLogic integrates seamlessly in terminal-server environments as well as popular virtual solutions like Citrix and VMware. That’s because it’s not trying to hijack how they handle printing. It’s augmenting their existing remote desktop printing structure to make printing more reliable and print management more flexible.
• GPOs and scripts are gone. You don’t need them to configure printer deployments in PrinterLogic. Eliminating GPOs and scripts speeds up login times while avoiding common conflicts that cause deployments to fail.
• With PrinterLogic, you can quickly set up advanced, targeted printer deployments. For example, with location-based printing end users instantly and automatically get the right printers wherever they happen to be. There’s also a self-service portal for end users to safely take printer installs into their own hands. What used to be a chore is precise and dependable when you’re using PrinterLogic.
• You get centralized printer management—including a consolidated driver repository—that complements your centralized thin-client management. PrinterLogic’s web-based admin console gives the IT team a single window onto the entire print environment for added security and effortless control.

When you’ve got a direct-IP printing platform with seamless integration, zero GPOs, targeted deployments and centralized printer management, that equates to less time spent on troubleshooting and dealing with print-related support tickets. Your end users waste less time waiting for their jobs to print or for IT to provide them with a new printer. Depending on how printers are provisioned, print jobs can be sent straight to printers, bypassing the WAN completely. That frees up precious bandwidth.

Oh, and here’s another PrinterLogic bonus: You can get rid of your print servers. That’s a major reduction in infrastructure that pairs perfectly with the benefits of a thin-client environment.

True success lies in the results
The real-world results speak for themselves. RC Willey implemented PrinterLogic in a thin-client environment with the aim of making print management more efficient (read the case study here). The multi-state home-furnishings company is now saving along the lines of 80 hours with every single driver change. PrinterLogic’s centralized printer management and its ability to simplify thin-client printing made that possible.

PrinterLogic can help your organization find success with thin-client printing too. It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning to migrate to a thin-client setup or you’ve already got one in place. Download a free 30-day PrinterLogic trial today and put it to the test.