Feeling the Security Squeeze? How to Protect PHI with Cloud-Native Printing

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Breaches amongst healthcare organizations have been on the rise in the last few years, but massive cyber attacks in recent months are the cause of immediate concern. In the first half of 2024 alone, it’s been reported that HealthEquity faced a breach affecting 4.5 million in the U.S., RiteAid was subject to an attack impacting 2.2 million users, and Change Healthcare–a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group–reported the data of potentially one-third of Americans was leaked. 

All three breaches were reported to have each lost at least two or more of these sensitive Protected Health Information (PHI) data points, including:

  • Full name
  • Address
  • Date of birth
  • SSN
  • Taxpayer details
  • Driver license number
  • Dependents’ information
  • Employer and employee IDs
  • Payment card information
  • Medical history
  • Health insurance details

In a world where sharing personal details with providers to receive care is necessary, patients must have trust that their healthcare organizations are safeguarding their highly sensitive information. Without proper cybersecurity protocols in place around PHI, companies providing healthcare services risk losing retention, their integrity, and the trust of their communities, all of which are necessary to survive in this climate. 

 

How do data breaches happen? 

Vulnerable Third-Party Solutions

It’s common for multiple companies to use third-party service providers; however, when a service provider is breached, all organizations utilizing their services are implicated. 

This happened to HealthEquity, which was using HealthEC, a health management solution company. HealthEC was the initial target of the breach, which led to the implication of 4.5 million HealthEquity users’ data. 

 

Unprotected Log-in Processes

If a company only has one authentication precaution in place for users, its systems are extremely vulnerable and a likely target for hackers. However, using multi-function authentication (MFA) precautions can make you 99% less likely to be hacked. 

MFA requires a user to verify their identity by using more than one authentication method, such as a badge swipe, PIN, QR code, or password verification, to access guarded information. This essentially adds multiple hoops for a hacker to jump through to gain information. These authentication methods are often used to log in to patient or provider portals, request subscriptions, schedule appointments, or access a repository of data. 

In the case of the pharmacy chain RiteAid’s ransomware attack, a hacker simply used an employee’s log-in credentials and gained access to the businesses’ systems.

For Change Healthcare, Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealth Group Andrew Witty explicitly revealed that the attack happened because UnitedHealth was not using multi-factor authentication, regardless of it being an industry standard. 

 

Is my print environment at risk of a data breach? 

Print environments have historically been a vulnerable attack surface (remember PrintNightmare?) for hackers to access company and PHI data. By implementing a print management solution like PrinterLogic, you can protect your network using these security features: 

Zero Trust Printing: Reduce attack surfaces by eliminating old infrastructure like print servers.

Secure Release Printing: Protect sensitive documents using MFA for print job retrieval.

Off-Network Printing: Allow remote employees and contractors to print on the go while maintaining security.

IdP Integrations: Securely use leading third-party Identity Providers to store and manage passwords and other authentication data.

Rules & Routing: Configure criteria that prevent unauthorized users from printing documents with specific keywords and patient information. 

 

How can using PrinterLogic prevent cyber attacks? 

PrinterLogic’s print management solution is a cloud-native, centralized platform that ensures the PHI information your org handles is protected internally and externally, preventing threats on all fronts. Print jobs stay on the local network, and you get unlimited access to security features that defend against internal and external cyber threats. 

In addition, PrinterLogic is certified as a SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001:2022 compliant solution designed to help you better protect your data, improve compliance with industry regulations, and increase customer trust.

Gear up to prevent attacks against your healthcare organization’s print environment by booking a demo. Still want to learn more? Here’s everything you need to know about getting started with PrinterLogic.  

Output Management and Print Management: What’s the Difference?

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If you’re a bit confused about the difference between print management and output management, it’s ok. There’s some overlap in what they do. They even have some of the same benefits. 

However, output management has a broader scope than print management. It encompasses everything print management does, plus much more—making it an ideal choice for companies that are serious about digital transformation, cutting costs, and automating processes for better efficiency. Here’s how the two solutions compare and what you need to know about each. 

  

What Is Print Management?

As its name implies, print management software manages printed pages. With print management software, you can print from phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and other devices across multiple operating systems. 

Managing printed documents starts with security. Print management software often has authentication features to make sure only authorized users submit print jobs. The software keeps print jobs confidential, manages passwords, keeps track of authorization controls, and ensures only the person who submitted the print job can print and retrieve their print job. 

In addition to supporting security, print management increases efficiency. Its ability to track print jobs helps ensure document accountability and enforces better printing behavior. Better printing behavior means a reduction in waste, costs, and wear and tear on printing machinery. 

Lastly, print management software helps ensure compatibility among devices, offers bring-your-own-device printing, streamlines workflows, and tracks and gathers data on printing jobs. 

 

What Is Output Management? 

Output management is a way of creating, distributing, and managing documents. Output management encompasses print management’s print documents, but it includes digital documents and document management, too. Its capabilities expand beyond those of print management software to add formatting, processing, and handling of digital information, version control, and archiving documents. For companies in heavily regulated industries—especially healthcare, finance, and manufacturing—output management software’s security features also help ensure compliance with laws and industry specifications. 

Because output management software deals with print and digital documents, it works with a wider variety of formats than print management software. File types such as Word, Excel, PDF, .sav, .spv, XML, HTML, and raw text are all easy to work with in output management and securely stored in a single centralized database. 

A company can connect applications, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software, with output management software to export and print data and reports to any office printers. Output management also enables companies to connect processes from legacy applications to manage all aspects of document distribution, printing, and routing from a centralized platform.

The Benefits of  Output Management

Companies that implement output management solutions see benefits such as:

  • Increased automation and streamlined workflows for heightened productivity and efficiency
  • Faster and more accurate delivery of documents
  • More data, insights into printing behaviors, and tracking abilities across many channels and formats
  • Increased organization and retrievability of stored documents
  • Real-time notifications to speed up project completion and communication, breaking down function silos and bridging the gap between disparate systems
  • Reduced errors and security breaches
  • Compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, GMP, etc.
  • More flexibility, because, unlike print management solutions that require a standardized format, output management systems can handle more formats for faster, easier printing 

Because of its ability to handle multiple types of documents and automate a greater number of processes, output management will benefit your organization more overall when compared to a print management solution. Output management platforms incorporate more processes, assets, and devices, meaning you get better visibility and fewer interruptions as they’re all managed in the same place. Even more, your company will save money because many of your necessary processes are streamlined and automated. 

 

Drive Your Business Processes Forward with PrinterLogic Output Management

For companies investing in digital transformation or simply wanting to cut back on costs to invest in data security, PrinterLogic’s Output Management solution is exactly what you’re looking for. Our centralized, easy-to-use platform is here to unify your print and document management systems. You’ll benefit from our unique Admin Console that allows you to manage both front- and back-end printing from a single place, and your IT team will thank you for the decreased number of manual interventions needed.

To see how PrinterLogic’s Output Management solution can drive your business processes forward, book a free demo today.

How to Adopt Zero Trust Printing

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If someone were to tell you you should be scared of your printers, you’d likely laugh in their face. While clunky, they aren’t exactly an intimidating adversary. What everyone doesn’t know is that printers pose a huge, costly threat to your organization.

Printers connected to your corporate network are a wide attack vector for hackers. Along with being an entryway into your business’s network, hackers are able to attack other applications and launch ransomware through a compromised printer, wreaking havoc on your organization. 

According to this print security report by Quocirca, over two-thirds (68%) of organizations have experienced data losses due to unsecured printing practices in the past 12 months, leading to an average of $770,000 per data breach.

Since the need for printers remains high in the workplace, companies must pivot from traditional security measures towards Zero Trust printing in order to protect company data. 

 

Understanding Zero Trust

Before jumping off the deep end, it’s important to understand the basics. A Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA) is a completely new approach to traditional network models. The structure as a whole is based on one principle: Never trust, always verify.

Traditional Network: This model inherently trusts anyone inside their network’s perimeter and is protected through a single verification point (typically a basic password based on an employee’s pet). 

Zero Trust Network: A security model in which no device is trusted by default, and users must be continually authenticated, authorized, and validated before being allowed access to applications and data, whether they are inside or outside the organization’s network.

Traditional networks are no longer safe because once any endpoint inside the network is compromised, attackers can move laterally and gain access to anything else on that network. Within a  Zero Trust network, access is limited, which is one of the most critical pieces of an effective Zero Trust strategy since most cyberattacks are internal and, more often than not, accidental.

 

Strengthening Your Network Security

Remote work is here to stay. While employees enjoy the conveniences of not commuting to an office, IT departments are flailing to put in place the robust back-end infrastructures needed to protect organizations’ data amid the transition. 

As employees use their own home printers for company printing, this poses two potential attack surfaces for hackers:

  1. An unsecured machine connected to a company computer. Connecting a company computer to an unsecured home printer provides a gateway past any VPN or security. Once a hacker moves from the printer to the company drive, they can gain access to the company’s primary network.

  2. Information is stored on the printer’s hard drive. Printer hard drives store previously queued print jobs for a varying degree of time. Hackers are able to break into these hard drives using a back door to view sensitive company information by accessing the employee’s home Wi-Fi.

Organization’s using a traditional network model don’t stand a chance against these threats. However, shifting to a Zero Trust approach means avoiding these types of vulnerabilities altogether by eliminating outdated infrastructure, like print servers, and going serverless. This reduces attack surfaces, strengthens security for remote workers, provides threat detection and prevention, and allows companies more visibility into print activity overall. 

 

Investing in Print Security 

Now that you understand the time to transition to a Zero Trust printing architecture is now, it’s important to select the right print management solution for your organization. The best possible solution will check these four critical boxes:

✔ Access and identity management

✔ Authentication for all connections and endpoints

✔ Segmentation of data to limit harm from breaches

✔ Simple, secure management features

PrinterLogic inherently checks off every box and possesses the necessary tools for your Zero Trust Printing environment. You can finally address your organization’s needs with a scalable solution that offers round-the-clock network protection and unlocks the true potential of your document and print management processes. 

 


Ready to see what Zero Trust Printing from PrinterLogic can do for you? Schedule a demo today. 

Without Proper Print Management, Printers Can Be a Security Risk

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Originally published on July 25, 2016

Have you ever heard of a little thing called PrintNightmare? Of course, you have—everyone has following the migraine of a breach that first reared its ugly face in June of 2020. The endless saga continues to shine a light on printer vulnerabilities, bringing us to the critical topic of proper print management.

Back in the day (no, not the 80’s, more like May of 2020), it was sufficient for organizations to have their networks locked down tight through firewalls, filtering, and strong authorization measures to guard against hackers. But there’s a ubiquitous weak spot that is frequently overlooked: securing your print infrastructure. Think of it this way—what good are cameras and locked doors on your home if the back door is wide open and no security precautions are in an intruder’s way?

This is where PrinterLogic soars in with a red cape to save the day. We realize these vulnerabilities aren’t solely digital, so we can offer a comprehensive print management solution to protect your organization from digital and in-person vulnerabilities.

The Most Common Printer Threat

Want us to let you in on a little secret? One of the biggest threats to printer security is physical documents—the ones that have been printed but marooned on the output tray, helpless and vulnerable to prying eyes. This happens more than you think.

For example, a common instance would be a manager sending a confidential employee file to a shared printer. But then he gets distracted and doesn’t retrieve it. How often have you thought, “I’ll quickly pop into the restroom, or grab a coffee” before moseying on over to retrieve your print job? We all do it and make the most of stepping away from our workstations! Unfortunately, trying to instill the fear of the printer gods in the average employee isn’t very effective—confidential documents remain visible to everyone, and all the encryption in the world can’t help you.

Combatting Unsupervised Documents

Secure printing solutions like PrinterLogic <insert dramatic hair flip> prevent this from happening by seamlessly integrating Secure Release Printing. This feature boosts printer security by essentially splitting printing into two deliberate steps: the initiation of the print job, followed by the execution (and retrieval) of the print job. 

PrinterLogic offers three different release options for this kind of security printing:

  1. Badge/Card Reader: In this scenario, the end user swipes a badge or I.D. card through a reader device, releasing the print job to a nearby printer (this can be done either through the printer’s embedded control panel or a networked reader device). Commercial printers often come equipped with secure printing solutions like an integrated card or badge reader, but even USB readers will work. This is ideal if your organization has an existing badge system.
  2. Embedded Control Panel: Here, the end user logs in and releases the desired print jobs using the printer’s integrated control panel coupled with the PrinterLogic Mobile App installed on the employee’s smart device. The app supports most printers and is available for download on The App Store and Google Play. As far as secure printing goes, this option is one of the easiest and most cost-effective methods because it requires no additional hardware.
  3. Browser: An incredibly flexible approach to print security, this deployment option allows any device that can run a browser—PC, Mac, Chromebook, or even a mobile device—to access PrinterLogic’s web-based control panel and release specific print jobs to any printer on the network. This is incredibly handy when printing to unfamiliar devices because it allows users to confirm the correct physical printer before printing. It also enables organizations to turn any network printer into a secure release printing-enabled machine because the release device can be placed in kiosk mode next to the associated printer.
  4. QR Code: QR codes are on the rise as a great way to release print jobs—and it’s a fully touchless process. Employees can use a QR code on their device of choice and simply scan it at the printer to release their print job.

Bonus: In addition to the convenience of these four secure deployment capabilities for end users, they also cut down on paper waste by ensuring documents are not abandoned or unnecessarily reprinted, and minimize the use of shared surfaces amidst the current pandemic.

Of course, PrinterLogic’s secure printing solutions don’t end with Secure Release Printing. Our Advanced Security Bundle offers multiple advanced features to keep your printed documents secure. Plus, our centralized print management gives you fine-grained control over every printer in your organization while maintaining a high level of printer security. By setting strict parameters dictating which users are able to print and where they are authorized to print, i.e. a combination of back-end oversight and front-end security, you’re implementing guards against sensitive documents being compromised and your print environment doesn’t risk becoming a liability.

Eliminate Ghost Printers With PrinterLogic Ghost(printer)busters

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**Originally published on June 7, 2017**

Do you feel a lingering presence haunting your enterprise? That chill isn’t the drop in temperatures, but a loOoOoming ghost printer. This is the term for a deleted printer that keeps reappearing even though you’ve tried all the customary methods to remove it. And, like ghosts, their presence can range from harmless annoyances to malicious poltergeists that cause havoc across the print environment and require reinforcements. So, who you gonna call? PrinterLogic–the Ghost(printer)busters!

We’re here to walk you through a few helpful tips if you don’t know what to do when a printer cannot be removed because access is denied in Server 2019, or when a ghost printer persists even after multiple server reboots. Keep reading to learn how to bust your ghost printer issues for good.

Empty the Spooler Folder

When a deleted printer keeps reappearing, it could be because there are still jobs associated with that printer in the spooler that can’t be flushed. In Server 2019 and previous versions, you’ll want to check the following path: C:WINDOWSsystem32spoolPRINTERS. There, you’ll see spool files with .shd and .shl extensions. Delete all of the files the folder contains, and then restart the spooler service.

Delete the Driver

On rare occasions, a driver will be associated with a particular printing device and cause it to persist. In the event that a printer cannot be removed because access is denied in Server 2019, try deleting the driver. This can cause a lot of problems if other clients are still using that driver, so schedule the driver removal and reinstall after working hours. Reboot the server and see if the ghost printer is gone. If so, you can safely reinstall the driver. Try updating to a newer version if one is available.

Play the Printer Spooler Game

Sometimes removing the printer can require a little added dexterity on your part. Some admins have reported that they have had to stop the spooler, start it, and then immediately attempt to delete the printer via the Print Management console before the spooler has finished starting. It might take a few tries.

Check for Stray Registry Keys and Redirects

If you’re finding that a ghost printer cannot be removed because access is denied in Server 2019, there’s a chance that it is still in the registry. Lingering registry keys can prevent a printer from being deleted. To remove a printer from the registry in Windows Server 2019, try scanning the registry keys and running the repair process with a software tool.

Last Resort

Should the ghost printers only appear in Devices and Printers–not Print Management–and you’ve already tried the steps above, there’s one more potential fix for a deleted printer that keeps reappearing. Try booting to your Server 2019 recovery disk and emptying the print spooler folder as well as all registry references to the printers. With any luck, this will remove the printer from the registry in Windows Server 2019 once and for all.

Frustrated yet? Unfortunately, hit-and-miss troubleshooting steps like these aren’t limited to ghost printers and finding out why, for example, a printer cannot be removed because access is denied in Server 2019. These steps are typical of routine print server administration, no matter what OS version you’re running—whether it’s driver deployments, printer installations, maintaining print queues, or even just managing printer profiles.

With PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution, you can eliminate your print servers and replace them all with robust, infinitely scalable enterprise-grade software that runs as an on-premise or cloud-native SaaS platform—both of which provide full-featured printing to your entire organization using the existing print infrastructure. PrinterLogic’s intuitive centralized management and direct IP backbone mean that there are no registry keys to struggle with, no spooler crashes, no rogue drivers, no Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and scripts, and certainly no deleted printers that keep reappearing.

By implementing PrinterLogic, you also get seamless integration with virtual environments, an acclaimed Self-Service Installation Portal for end users, and enterprise-wide centralized management from a single pane of glass.

Oh, and don’t forget peace of mind. Why? Because the PrinterLogic Ghost(printer)busters aren’t afraid of busting some ghost printers.

Why PrinterLogic Aligns With Zero Trust Principles

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In the last year, you’ve probably heard ‘Zero Trust’ creep into more and more of your conversations. So what does that mean? Is it “trending” as the kids say these days, or is it becoming a pillar of cybersecurity as we know it? (Here’s a hint: it’s the latter!)

The need to implement a Zero Trust approach may be a bandwagon you want to hop on–and should–but to effectively do so, you need to understand the 3 key principles of a Zero Trust Network Architecture.

So, grab a pen and paper (or ink and quill if you prefer) to take notes as we break down each principle’s objective and highlight why PrinterLogic aligns with your Zero Trust strategy.  

 

1. Always Verify

When you hear “trust issues” you probably associate it with a bad breakup, right? While we’re not trying to drum up old feelings, we are attempting to highlight how not innately trusting users in a cybersecurity context is actually a very good thing.

The backbone of a successful Zero Trust approach is simple: Never trust, always verify. This means never trusting any network between a device/user and the applications/data they’re attempting to access by implementing continuous verification of credentials and devices.

That may sound like excessive backend work for you and a time-consuming experience for end users, but it’s far less complicated and frustrating than legacy print processes. In a Zero Trust Architecture, each user, service, and device requires a unique identity used to decide who/what should be granted access to data or services. This is made possible with the help of Identity Providers (IdPs) which verify if the entity trying to gain access is who/what they say they are.

A recent verification–that’s also relevant to today’s workforce–is based on adaptive identification in which trust is earned based on the location of the user. Adaptive ID provides an extra level of authentication to end users and is an integral part of managing a remote or hybrid work environment. To put it plainly, an employee who typically works from home (still in yesterday’s pajamas most likely) is trusted more than a worker who is suddenly working from a vacation resort. 

“We have built full IdP integrations* into all the leading Identity Providers in the Gartner Identity leading quadrant as well as customer SAML support.   When we say full support, we not only support IdP native authentication support allowing for MFA, but we also support the IdPs SCIM implementation allowing for all the best user provisioning practices.” – Corey Ercanbrack, Chief Technology & Product Officer

*PrinterLogic supports all major IdPs and ensures that each user, device, and location are always under scrutiny by checking with each IdP’s authorization and authentication policies.

 

2. Minimize Impact

We’re sorry to mention both bad breakups and PrintNightmare in one blog, but we promise it’s necessary. Looking back to July 2021, PrintNightmare is the perfect example of an explosive blow with no containment. The attack caused an unprecedented level of damage to print environments with lingering threats more than a year later.

While you’re unable to fully prevent this kind of attack, it is in your control to minimize the impact of the breach. For example, eliminating your print servers is a proactive move to minimize attack surfaces by shrinking your network for less exposure. As an added bonus, IT teams are relieved of the burdens of manual updates and patch installations.

We can’t discuss Zero Trust without highlighting microsegmentation as a core principle. The beauty of microsegmentation is that you don’t have to re-architect your infrastructure and gain complete visibility into your network environment, helping you contain breaches when they do happen. Microsegmentation for printing is achieved through direct IP printing which sends print jobs from the user’s workstation directly to their desired printer. 

Built on the security of AWS, PrinterLogic supports microsegmentation as a cloud solution that offers serverless direct IP printing and keeps your data secure with native Identity Provider (IdP) integrations based on SAML 2.0 and JIT Provisioning.  

 

3. Automate Processes

Still with us? We hope so, because we’re about to get to some good stuff. So far, we’ve outlined what feels like never-ending work on your part to consistently verify and prevent attacks–which we know sounds daunting. However, we’re here to help you work smarter, not harder. Think of it this way: to keep a building or space secure, you’d hire 24/7 security guards to prevent attackers entering the premises. Even with around-the-clock security, attackers are still going to try to find a way in if given the time and resources. 

The same goes for cyber attackers trying to breach your network, but we’re talking more powerful and protective than a mall cop on a Segway. To maintain airtight security, it’s important to employ solutions that are constantly updating behind the scenes to thwart potential attacks and close security gaps with no manual labor required on your end. Automatic processes like these are the star player in any Zero Trust Architecture that reduces your workload and increases security–a literal win-win!

As we’ve outlined, Zero Trust Printing involves a revolving door of data. Data is power–the more you have the more you know, you know? But, data isn’t as powerful if you can’t process it in real-time to make precise decisions and take immediate action when a data breach does occur. 

With PrinterLogic, your IT team can implement automatic processes for:

  • Deploying printer updates
  • Changing user access 
  • Creating user accounts
  • Managing user credentials (including SSO and MFA)
  • Surveilling endpoints (devices trying to access your data)

You’ll now have a bird’s eye view around the clock of your network, putting you in a position to better prevent and protect against future breaches. Implementing a Zero Trust approach into your overall security strategy, including your print environment, is anything but a trend. With PrinterLogic’s Zero Trust Printing solution, you’re setting yourself up for long-term protection.

“PrinterLogic can be configured to support multiple IdPs at a time. This helps companies to seamlessly migrate/transition between IdPs as they scale or change directions. It supports companies as they scale through acquisition by connecting to old and new IdPs.  Support for multiple IdPs also helps companies scale when they need to have different security controls between administrators and end users.” – Corey Ercanbrack, Chief Technology & Product Officer

Four Tips to Reduce IT Infrastructure

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Technology is the fuel for our digital world and integrated into every professional field. It’s a universal necessary component for employees to communicate, complete tasks, and make over-arching advances.

None of this is possible without an IT department in each workplace managing an organization’s devices, networks, and cyber security. To do all this, each company works off of an IT infrastructure designed to manage and operate enterprise environments. 

With the recent demand to quickly accommodate remote work environments, infrastructure costs and complexities have increased. Ensure your company is set up for success by following these four tips for reducing IT infrastructure.

1. Reassess Your Strategy

If you’re currently following a traditional IT infrastructure, it may be time to reassess and transition to a cloud structure. Traditional infrastructures consist of mulitiple software and hardware needs—such as data centers, servers, facilities, etc.—but this upkeep requires quite a bit of power and physical space. This results in high costs, excessive employee efforts, and wasted time. 

Switching to a cloud computing IT infrastructure is a modern alternative to streamline your efforts. This approach includes the necessary components—hardware, virtualization, storage, and network—but it doesn’t take as much manpower to manage and support as the traditional approach. With a cloud infrastructure, processes are simplified for both IT administrators and end users, reducing complexities and costs.

2. Eliminate Print Servers

Office printing is often overlooked as a simple function, but the technology and management behind the scenes are far more complex. A big reduction to IT infrastructure can be made by eliminating your workplace’s print servers.

Serverless printing allows you to centrally manage printer objects, drivers, profiles, and settings all from one pane of glass. Yes, you read that correctly. By eliminating print servers, you’re in turn eliminating draining facets of your IT infrastructure.  

3. Reduce Help Desk Tickets

Fielding high volumes of help desk requests weigh down IT departments’ resources. Most of these tickets are print-related, resulting in IT admins having to bounce around all day personally addressing each request, leaving little time for other work. Moving to a cloud-based system for both printing and other needs means help desk tickets will dramatically decline. 

The previous influx of tickets submitted because print updates needed to be installed or user permissions were incorrect are gone because they’re now being pushed automatically, company-wide. In addition, persistent requests to address issues on your IT hardware are also long gone because changes to individual devices are now sent fleet-wide with a few clicks.

4. Incorporate a Print Management Solution

We know the daunting process of breaking down, assessing, and reducing your organization’s IT infrastructure is an excessive amount of work. Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. By incorporating a print management solution, the tips we’ve outlined above will all be taken care of for you. 

PrinterLogic’s print management solution is a cloud-based platform that will streamline print processes across the board. Less time will be allocated to print-oriented problems and upkeep, therefore reducing your IT infrastructure exponentially.

 

Three Ways To Reduce Printing Costs

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Cutting costs and improving efficiencies are top of mind for any organization. But when it comes time to make changes, reducing printing costs often isn’t at the top of the list. It’s natural to address more prominent expenses like labor, equipment, or workspace facilities first. However, reassessing your organization’s printing process can provide immediate and long-term savings without a huge investment.

Don’t worry, we’re not here to share standard tips like ‘reduce toner usage’ or ‘print double-sided.’ Instead, we’re here to focus on the bigger drains on your time and resources.

Reduce Paper Waste from Printing

It’s common in the workplace to click ‘print’ only to forget about retrieving your document. This results in your print job being tossed in the trash (or hopefully recycling) by a coworker who’s annoyed with the stockpile of forgotten documents bogging down the community printer.

Whether it’s a coffee refill, lunch break, or an impromptu conversation with coworkers, distractions aren’t avoidable. But, implementing Secure Release Printing processes to reduce waste is very doable.

Secure Release Printing allows a printer to withhold a print job until an employee is ready to retrieve it. When ready, an employee will release their desired print job in person by swiping their badge, entering a user ID/PIN, or using a smartphone app, regardless of when they clicked ‘print.’

This feature can save organizations thousands of dollars per employee every year in paper, ink, toner, storage, copying, postage, disposal, and recycling costs.

Boost Your Print Security

Don’t worry, security guards on Segways aren’t necessary. We’re talking about the behind-the-scenes protection for your print environment. A prominent vulnerability across all fields and organizations is not properly securing your print infrastructure.

Printer servers are often overlooked as simple internal devices, which is why they’re an easy vantage point for cyber attackers. Because the print server is connected to all devices, it serves as a single point of failure. That makes it a high-value target, and vulnerabilities are being found more often than ever in print server and server spooling software. If hackers can get through to your print server, they potentially gain access to your network, confidential files, and your organization’s data overall.

Forbes reports the average cost of a data breach from 2020 was $3.86 million. In addition, BigCommerce reported the average cost of a data breach in 2020 for big business was more than $150 million. Whether your company is big or small, the price to pay for a vulnerable print network is costly.

Implement Central Management and Self-Service Printing

The purpose of the IT department is to ensure all technologies are running smoothly and to personally assist employees in properly using their devices. This often means fielding numerous helpdesk tickets for printing requests and repeatedly having to deal with driver upgrades and day-to-day management.

Without a streamlined print process, IT departments are bogged down fixing outdated problems like individually installing a printer on each employee’s computer, manually implementing updates, and addressing all employees’ printer connectivity issues in person. Today, these problems can all be solved using self-service printing portals and automatic deployments.

These features increase efficiency across the board by allowing automatic updates to be pushed network-wide and end users to download new printers themselves. That means IT employees spend their time working on more prominent, cost-effective work. Providing a centrally managed print process increases productivity for everyone in the organization and can mean significant cost savings to spend on other business ventures.

It’s time to take stock of your print environment and stop wasting money on old systems. Find out how a serverless print infrastructure can help you reduce printing costs today.

Enhance Remote Work Environments With Advanced Print Solutions

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It’s probably not surprising to hear that remote workplaces are working. Although a day in the office now includes pets as coworkers and business casual means a robe with slippers, working from home is a viable and efficient option for many companies these days.

Upwork reports over 1 in 3 U.S. employees will be working in a remote environment for the long run. To put this into perspective, the same reporting stated that prior to the pandemic, 78% of Americans were working in-person full-time. With this drastic and unforeseen change, IT workers are faced with finding printing solutions for remote employees. 

That leaves IT admins scrambling to find advanced print solutions to improve remote and hybrid work environments. 

Centralized Print Management for Remote Workers

With employees working from all over the globe, how are print problems and requests managed you ask? Don’t worry, it doesn’t involve IT making house calls. The answer is centralized print management. From a single pane of glass, IT admins can manage a company’s print environment system-wide.  

Gone are the days of IT having to manually fix every print-related issue in person on each individual machine. Even better, company-wide updates can be implemented simultaneously with centralized print management as well. 

Off-Network Printing for Hybrid Offices

Remote work doesn’t solely happen from a home office. Sometimes it’s from a cafe, on an airplane, at a stoplight, or even in someone else’s office. In our new normal, employees have the freedom to work on the go and move around as needed. 

Off-network printing offers employees the flexibility of sending print jobs to printers within their workplace’s network from anywhere while maintaining a secure connection. This also goes for employees living and working out-of-state from a company’s hub. 

Now that we’ve established how employees can print from anywhere, it’s time to address which devices can be utilized for off-network printing services. The answer is…ANY! Yes, any laptop and desktop, and even tablets or smartphones with the right applications, are compatible with off-network printing services. 

Secure and Touchless Printing for All Employees

And what good would off-network printing solutions be without secure retrieval processes as well. Secure release and touchless printing are other necessary components of a remote work environment. In this way, you can ensure that only the intended recipient is able to retrieve the documents when needed.

If sensitive documents, medical records, or confidential print jobs are being sent, an employee simply chooses the secure release printing option. Then the content can only be retrieved by swiping an I.D. badge or entering a user ID/PIN at the printer console. This way, you can print from home or on the go, but control when or who can retrieve the print job.

Touchless retrieval is another helpful option in which an employee can scan a QR code on the printer to select the print job they want to release. This option reduces the use of shared surfaces while maintaining a secure print environment.

With so much else changing right now, print management doesn’t have to be something your team is worried about. Serverless print solutions can improve and maintain a thriving remote work environment for any business while saving you money and offering more advanced features.

Benefits of the Epic Connector for Healthcare Organizations

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​​At this time in history, all eyes are on the healthcare industry as the global pandemic forges on. In a field where each second is valuable, there isn’t time for outdated and time-consuming print processes.

During these turbulent times, we at PrinterLogic decided to focus on how we could help IT administrators working in healthcare do their jobs more effectively. After attending the 2021 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, we’re confident our newest integration, the Epic Connector, will improve the health of print environments and allow IT professionals to take back more control.

Streamline Your Infrastructure

Forget about those long days of deploying and managing duplicate drivers and queues. The Epic Connector simplifies these processes so administrators can now manage all print settings from a single centralized Admin Console. 

With Epic, you no longer need multiple, expensive EMR print licenses or staff to handle significant issues. And forget waiting for outside intervention on updates or changes. Instead, everything can be managed from a single pane of glass. You’ll save both time and money by eliminating unnecessary labor and equipment expenses.

Every moment matters in a healthcare environment, and our goal is to simplify printing infrastructure across the board to make it easier to focus on patients.

Advance Your Safety and Security

This new output management process enhances security within your printing environment in addition to improving efficiency. We know the importance of privacy for both your organization and its patients, which is why print jobs are kept local and secure when managed through a single Admin Console.

Security for end users is also offered with our serverless print management solution. This includes Secure Release printing, an advanced feature that keeps a print job locked until the user personally retrieves it at the printer by entering a personal user ID/PIN. 

In addition, Secure Pull Printing includes a touchless option to reduce the use of shared surfaces while keeping any Protected Health Information (PHI) tightly controlled. Instead of entering a code directly into the printer, the end user can simply scan a personal QR code using their smartphone through our mobile app, or swipe their employee badge to obtain their documents.

Reduce Your Complex Processes While Increasing Output

At a time when healthcare workers are having to bounce between multiple hospitals and clinics, it’s unrealistic for EMR administrators to grant network access individually.

For example, a nurse employed by a hospital’s affiliate clinic needs to print a prescription using the hospital’s medical records (EMR) software. The clinic is an independent business and is not connected to the hospital’s secure network. With the Off-Network Printing feature from Epic, the nurse is able to make the connection from outside the corporate firewall to internal printer assets, all without involving EMR administrators. 

What was previously a persistent, time-consuming problem is now a streamlined process managed solely from one pane of glass. 

Gone are the days of frustrating, back-and-forth correspondence between hospital staff and administrators. It’s time to take back control of your printing environment by simplifying and automating print processes with the integration of the PrinterLogic Epic Connector.