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.  

Direct IP Printing vs. Print Servers: Pros and Cons of Each

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All IT managers and system administrators who manage print environments must eventually choose between print servers and configuring direct IP printers on their endpoints. Either approach has trade-offs, and several factors come into play when deciding which method is best.

Company Size Matters

If your company only has a handful of employees, the differences between using a print server and managing printing via direct IP are not that obvious. However, as the organization grows, the pain points stemming from IT’s print management choices become evident. 

 

Why Use Print Servers?

A print server can alleviate growth-related pain points because admins get centralized management for drivers, profiles, and print job auditing. You can set printer permissions and use Group Policy to map printers to users or workstations. They integrate with backend applications like EMR, CRM, and ERP and provide one print environment for the entire company. They also haven’t changed in functionality for decades, so they are easy to maintain and manage with the proper experience.

 

Where Print Servers Miss The Mark

Despite the few positives of employing print servers, it’s hard to keep up with them in the modern-day workplace because they require more maintenance than ever before. Company data is at risk if you fail to stay up-to-date with print server patch installations. Print servers also thrive with homogeneous printer fleets, meaning a printer fleet of mixed manufacturers can cause serious issues. 

Additional negatives of print servers include:

Vulnerabilities: Print servers introduce many headaches and vulnerabilities. This means there is a single point of failure for everyone attached to that server. Organizations can expect performance and functionality issues when every printer driver lives, works, and spools on the same print device. 

Unreliable GPO Scripting: If there are multiple locations and only one print server, some of your print job traffic will traverse the WAN, often increasing the time it takes to print. On some WAN links, print job traffic can cause congestion and impact other communication across the link.

Price: You can install print servers at each location, but depending on how you deploy them, it can get expensive. Think of the hardware, licensing, and maintenance costs when using multiple print servers. 

Limited Support: Windows print servers are typically set up for Windows clients only. There are ways to support Mac clients, but they come with limitations.

 

Figure 1: The advantages and disadvantages of print servers

The Benefits of Direct IP Printing

With direct IP printing configurations, users are free to manage their printers and profile settings. You gain the advantage of local spooling and rendering print jobs which boosts security. And those jobs go directly from the workstation to the printer. 

Direct IP printing is the most efficient way of printing and reduces overall network traffic. A driver issue or a job stuck in the print queue will only affect one user instead of your entire organization. Direct IP is also cost-effective because there’s no additional print management hardware to buy or maintain.

 

Problems with Direct IP Printing

The decentralized nature of direct IP printing environments is often considered a pain point for IT teams. Admins can’t track costs or identify print job activity throughout the company without employing a third-party print management solution for assistance. Plus, direct print from IP isn’t ideal for hybrid or remote work environments that are constantly changing. 

Additional pain points of direct IP printer environments include:

Time-Consuming Configuration: IT teams have to add printer drivers and configure them by IP address on every workstation. Not to mention IT teams have to keep up with changes and driver updates. 

Difficult Printer Replacement: A simple task of changing out a printer could require IT staff to touch all affected workstations, which is time-consuming. In dynamic environments, these efforts will inevitably fall behind, hurting user productivity.

Less Oversight and Management: Employees set their own printing rules without centralized group policy management, making it hard to keep up with print environments. 

Not a Scalable Solution: When the number of printers in your fleet reaches the hundreds and thousands, the manual labor required becomes overbearing just to keep printing flowing. 

 

Figure 2: Direct IP printing benefits and disadvantages

PrinterLogic: The Best of Both Worlds

What if I told you there is a way to get the centralized management benefits of a print server while maintaining the stability and efficiency of direct IP printing? You know, have your cake and eat it too.

PrinterLogic eliminates the need for print servers while providing a way to manage and install direct IP printers centrally. With PrinterLogic, you can easily convert your existing Microsoft print server environment to our serverless direct IP printing solution. 

Have multiple print servers? We take care of that too. 

You can also manage all printers and drivers from a single web-based Admin Console. PrinterLogic gives you more visibility into printing activity with an Advanced Reporting feature, allowing for a detailed view of all print jobs by users, departments, printers, and more.

PrinterLogic offers an on-premise solution and PrinterLogic SaaS (our cloud printing platform), so you can choose which version works best for you without sacrificing features or functionality. We have plenty of technical documentation to help your set-up go smoothly, too.  

Figure 3: PrinterLogic offers centralized management plus the efficiencies of direct IP

 

 

Centralized Printing Management | The What, Why, and How of Centralized Printing

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When you’re working toward streamlining your enterprise print environment, centralized printer management should be one of the highest priorities on your list. That’s because implementing centralized printer management addresses several key areas that are crucial to the process of simplifying and consolidating networked printers—and reducing IT burden. 

This is particularly true for retail, financial, healthcare, and government organizations with offices dispersed throughout regions or other countries. 

 

What is centralized print management?

Centralized printing management means instead of shifting between sites with different hardware and individuals with varied areas of oversight, you can administer all printing services from one terminal. That logistical integration alone makes your network printer management more efficient—saving time, money, and resources. It also eliminates the need for off-site visits just to address printer issues. 

 

Why choose a central print management solution?

Admins get “the four Cs” by moving to centralized print management:

Consolidation: Connect and manage all your users, devices, and locations from a simple interface—no matter where you are.

Convenience: Address printing issues immediately from a single pane of glass without having to make frequent off-site visits. 

Control: Easily set default printer preferences, add or delete printers in your printer fleet, and set up one-time or automatic deployments.

Cost-efficiency: Reduce operating and printing costs that impact your bottom line by gaining insight into print activity across your organization.

A solution like PrinterLogic offers these benefits and more. 

 

Centralized Print Management with PrinterLogic

PrinterLogic was developed around the concept of centralized printer management because it’s a sought-after feature in any scenario, regardless of whether you’ve got a highly distributed print infrastructure or just a single site. No matter where you or your IT staff are located, PrinterLogic’s intuitive web-based Admin Console allows you to monitor every networked printer in your organization—with or without domains or trusts—from a single pane of glass.

You can only imagine what this level of control offers you and your users’ printing needs.

Print-related requests can be taken care of instantaneously.

Printing disappears from your agenda during off-site visits. 

And user satisfaction increases since you can administer any network printer to them without a hitch. 

Using PrinterLogic’s Admin Console, you can easily create new printers and then deploy them to end users automatically without the hassle of having to use GPOs, scripts, or print servers. You can delete printers from workstations or entire departments, too, with just as much ease.

Plus, you can do everything in between regarding network printer management including maintenance activities like print queue management, print job troubleshooting and more–all from a central location. 

PrinterLogic lets you drill down to individual printers through hierarchies like country, building, department, and floor. Once you’ve selected a printer, you can modify individual settings such as the drivers, port, name, duplexing, color, paper type, and so on. Those changes are automatically pushed out to printers on the end user workstations. You can even set default printer preferences by simply checking a box.

Want to edit group properties quickly? Just use the find-and-replace function to adjust deployment assignments, print drivers, ports, comments, and other variables for hundreds or even thousands of printer objects at once.

This same approach to central printer management also applies to drivers. PrinterLogic also allows you to update drivers individually or en masse. And you can configure detailed parameters such as driver settings and profiles, giving you even more fine-grained control over printers throughout your entire organization. If you don’t want to deal with individual driver manufacturers, PrinterLogic empowers you to print to a universal driver for more flexibility. 

 

Start Managing Your Distributed Locations with Ease

Regardless of the size of your organization or the number of printers and locations you have, PrinterLogic simplifies how you manage print. We start with eliminating your print servers and moving you over to our cloud-native, direct IP printing platform. In return, you get increased productivity and a bird’s-eye view over “everything printing” in your organization.

So, if you’re considering a centralized print management solution as a means to cut printing costs and take back control of your distributed locations, what are you waiting for?

Here’s a free 30-day trial to get you started. 

How to Eliminate Your School District’s Print Servers

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Did you know that the national gross domestic product (GDP) is growing 13.5% faster than public education budgets? It’s one of many reasons schools face continued funding shortages. As budget cuts continue, K-12 schools are desperate to find ways to make more efficient use of their resources. One of the top ways to save money for years to come is to eliminate print servers in your school district. 

Print servers are clunky, expensive, and difficult to maintain. They’re also a headache for IT teams, which means schools have to add and pay additional IT staff members. As more K-12 schools move away from print servers, both teachers and students are finding benefits far beyond improved finances, such as improved data security, faster printing time, and easier scalability. To help your school district move from print servers to a centralized, serverless print management system, here are the three easy steps you need to take. 

  

 

Deploy Chrome OS Client Extension to Chromebooks or Users From Google Admin Console

The PrinterLogic ChromeOS Client extension enables your ChromeOS workstation to communicate with your instance of PrinterLogic. The client installed on your ChromeOS Device communicates with PrinterLogic on a regular basis. To help eliminate print servers in your school district, start by deploying the ChromeOS Client Extension to Chromebooks or specific Google Chrome users from the Google Admin console. The Chrome extension allows users to easily migrate from Google Cloud Print. From there, you can add printers, change print settings, manage printers, see the print queue, view the release portal, and refresh configurations. 

Integration with Chrome is becoming more important than ever. Chromebooks have become an essential part of school culture, with more than 50 million students and teachers using Chromebooks every day. Moving away from print servers wouldn’t be complete without involving Chromebooks. As more school districts upgrade to centralized, serverless print management systems, they’re enjoying the benefit of easier and faster printing—including from tablets and Chromebooks. Chromebook cloud printing is a quick, simple way for students and teachers to print from anywhere in the school. 

 

 

Manage Printers and Deployment Settings in the PrinterLogic Admin Console 

Once you have the Chrome extension installed, the next step is to manage printers and deployment settings in the PrinterLogic Admin Console. PrinterLogic is flexible and offers a variety of settings, so you can tailor the settings to the needs of your individual school or district. With the PrinterLogic Admin Console, you can manage users, devices, drivers, and more all from one centralized location.

Your printing quotas require careful consideration. Serverless print management software allows admins to easily establish printing quotas, which can be different for teachers, students, and other faculty positions. Quotas prevent people from printing in excess and using paper unnecessarily. Sometimes overprinting is a genuine mistake, like when a teacher meant to print a single page but accidentally printed a whole chapter. Other times, overprinting is the result of carelessness. Either way, print quotas prevent the waste of paper, ink, and electricity. Print quotas can also help manage wear and tear on the physical printers and indicate when parts may need to be replaced. 

The settings also have another use: information. The data that serverless printing software gathers from print jobs offers important insights into who is using paper and when. With that data, school admins can make strategic decisions to adjust quotas, better understand teachers’ and students’ needs, and better allocate resources. The data can show trends over time, by demographic, and by location so schools know exactly how resources are used. By moving away from print servers, IT teams gain full visibility into all user scan activity within the Admin Console. That visibility helps IT teams manage security, improve workflows, track cost-savings, protect budgets, and even inform future purchases, such as buying additional scanners for staff. 

Skip the Server and Print Directly to the Network Printers

After completing the first two steps, you’re free to send print jobs directly to network printers from your ChromeOS device. PrinterLogic is OS-agnostic, so you can print from nearly any device. 

Because the print jobs go directly to network printers instead of to a server, the printing time is faster. Students and teachers will be able to retrieve their print jobs before the bell rings. 

The district IT team will breathe a sigh of relief with network printers, too, because there are no more drivers to install, no more print queue problems, and fewer clunky hardware issues to fix. Without print servers, your school also has a lower risk of data breaches, which your IT team will be happy about. 

Print management solutions and cloudless servers mean your IT team can focus on more meaningful initiatives. According to TechnologyLab, some of the top priorities for forward-looking IT teams in K-12 schools are:

  • Implementing AI-driven adaptive learning platforms to cater to individual student needs.
  • Using AI-powered analytics to assess student performance and tailor teaching strategies accordingly.
  • Integrating virtual assistants and chatbots to enhance student support services.

 

When IT teams don’t have to spend their time fixing outdated print servers, those are the priorities they can invest their efforts in. IT teams can shift their focus to implementing cutting-edge solutions that offer students more opportunities to learn. 

To learn more about how PrinterLogic solution can help your school district move from time- and money-draining print servers to fast, centralized print management networks, schedule a free demo with us today.

Printing Management Software: Do You Need It?

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Originally published July 5, 2023. 

According to printing giant Xerox, 61% of organizations have experienced data losses due to unsecure printing practices. Internal document theft is up. The financial damage caused by data breaches is getting harder to swallow. And companies are taking note.  

These are staggering threats from something as simple as printing a document. The good news is that secure printing solutions can protect your organization, as well as offer some cost-saving benefits.  

So, what are secure printing solutions, and why do you need them? 


What is secure printing?

Secure printing is the process of releasing a print job at a designated printer using one of several authentication methods. Documents are held in a queue until the user is physically present at the printer. Authentication methods vary—from entering an employee PIN to scanning an ID badge or using a mobile application—and can be released only when the user is physically at the printer. 

Secure printing is slightly different than pull printing. Pull printing allows jobs to be released at any pull printing-enabled network printer. Regardless, secure printing and pull printing offer an additional layer of security that protects confidential documents. However, secure printing solutions provide benefits that extend to the remote workforce and help future-proof your print environment. 


How can secure printing solutions benefit you?

1. They help you reduce legacy infrastructure.

Secure printing solutions aren’t exactly “secure” if you can’t reduce legacy infrastructure. In this case, we’re talking about print servers. 

After the PrintNightmare fiasco in 2021, it became clear that print servers needed to be wiped from the picture. Secure printing solutions remove print servers from the equation and don’t hold print jobs in a spooler queue. Instead, print jobs are held at the workstation or the printer and remain on the local network until a user is ready to release it.

In addition to increased security, eliminating legacy infrastructure can save a lot of money. Up-front cost is a common concern when replacing entire systems, but some executives don’t realize that legacy printers require high amounts of electricity and frequently need repairs. Secure printing solutions allow teams to get rid of the expensive, clunky legacy equipment and offer more energy-efficient and long-lasting printing options. 


2. They allow remote workers to print securely.

Remote workers need a way to print securely without having to resort to printing on an unmanaged, off-network home printer. Secure printing solutions can give contractors, remote workers, and roaming employees the ability to print to an in-network printer while working on an outside network. 

This functionality enables out-of-office end users to print freely and release documents at the office at their convenience, putting a stop to using home office printers (which are a huge security liability and impossible for admins to track). Even with remote employees working all around the globe, secure printing also offers visibility.

Furthermore, secure off-network printing capabilities offer employees a flexible way to deliver confidential documents to someone in the office instead of sending personal or customer information to them via email.  


3. They adhere to Zero Trust standards.

Secure printing is a crucial aspect of complying with Zero Trust standards, meaning that anyone who wants to print must provide verification. The additional layer of security keeps confidential information in the hands of those who printed it. That level of authentication is a step in the right direction, but to be considered a Zero Trust-caliber secure printing solution, it also has to integrate with the identity providers (IdPs) used in your environment. 

IdPs provide your company with a double layer of security that end users must go through before they can print. IdPs also restrict users to the necessary applications they need to do their job. Adding secure printing functionality on top of that dramatically reduces the risk of identity and document theft, helping you achieve Zero Trust Printing. 

 

4. They give users mobile printing capabilities.

Secure printing capabilities can extend to your end users’ mobile devices. If you’re managing a BYOD environment, leveraging phones, tablets, and laptops to print securely is a great way to cut down on costs and boost productivity simultaneously. Users can send print jobs to a designated printer on the company network and release them later without having to hop on specific company computers just to print a few documents.  

However, there’s a caveat to this one. 

Not all secure printing solutions offer 100% compatibility with all printer models and operating systems (this one does). So, make sure to choose a solution that checks all the boxes for the devices and printers in your environment. 

 

5. They future-proof your business.

Theft isn’t going away. But it’s possible to mitigate it. 

Secure printing solutions set you up for success and reduce the chances of information being exploited for personal gain or a competitive advantage. They’re able to meet the demands of a hybrid workforce and offer a consistent end-user experience that doesn’t hamper productivity. They enable printing from an array of mobile devices and are built around maintaining compliance throughout all industries. 

Even better, they take pressure off IT.

With a more modern and free IT team paired with the ability to work with remote and hybrid employees, secure printing solutions pave the way for you to thrive now and in the future. 


Secure Printing Solutions on a Single Platform

One problem with most of the secure printing products on the market is that they require a print server, which means that if your print server goes down, everything ceases to work. 

PrinterLogic eliminates your print servers and removes the single point of failure while providing a centrally managed direct IP printing platform. On top of that, PrinterLogic is 100% device- and OS-agnostic and integrates with all major IdPs. 

PrinterLogic’s version of secure printing, Secure Release Printing, holds print jobs on the user’s workstation and empowers users to release print jobs using one of the following methods:

  • Smartphone App/QR Code
  • Control Panel
  • Web Browser
  • Badge reader

Plus, get access to additional secure printing features like Off-Network Printing, Mobile App Release, and Concurrent IdP Support to extend the security reach of your print environment. 


See firsthand how PrinterLogic leverages secure printing features in the cloud and gives you the protection you need in today’s print environments. Schedule a demo and see how PrinterLogic can change your printing today.

How to Achieve the Printing Efficiency You Need with Rule-Based Automation

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Output Management Rules & Routing

Your electronic medical record system, enterprise resource planning, and other large-scale applications your organization relies on form critical parts of business processes. It’s crucial the output from those systems ends up in the right place, in the correct format, and on time.

With Vasion’s introduction of Output Management comes higher reliability, speed of delivery, and unification of management for both office and back-end application print management when printing from these systems, but still leaves the opportunity to further increase the efficiency, accuracy, and reliability of print and workflow tasks. 

 

Our customers stress that better efficiency is necessary for their output processes.

One of the concerns commonly brought up by customers I’ve spoken to has been ensuring uptime for critical printing with their printers themselves. If the printer designated for shipping labels or customer invoices breaks, it can put a serious dent in productivity while it’s down, and it’s not always easy to redirect traffic to a new printer within a customer’s application, resulting in unacceptable downtime.

Additionally, these environments often bring processes requiring manual intervention. A healthcare organization we worked with hoped to reduce costs by printing the majority of their documents in black and white, with only after-visit summaries printed in color to maintain a positive patient experience. Now, a manual touchpoint is introduced into the printing process, and it’s up to the individual clinician to remember to select the correct setting for just that type of job every time. 

 

These, and many other examples, drove Rules & Routing, a rule-based automation feature, as part of our Output Management Bundle. 

I challenge you to look deeper into your printing processes–you’ll notice those manual touchpoints often arise in your print environment, like manually converting documents to print-ready PDFs, paper notes taped to the printer reminding employees to print only in black and white, and attaching digital files to emails after scanning. These can all be automated as rules that trigger specific actions based on a set of behaviors. 


The three main components of Rules & Routing: 

  • Triggers are used to watch for specific events that should prompt the Rules & Routing service to decide which course of action to take.
  • Conditions provide the qualifying attributes that decide whether or not an action should be performed.
  • Actions are the actual behavior applied when conditions are met. 

These automated rules reduce or even eliminate any manual intervention, alter print data, increase document security, ensure proper delivery of documents, and more. In addition, document delivery goes beyond printers, including delivery direct to storage folders or through email, eliminating the manual touchpoint for your coworkers. 

 

Let’s look back at the example above from our customer needing to ensure continuous uptime for their printing processes. 

To solve this issue, I would create a rule that automatically reroutes my print data to a backup printer in the event we detect print failures on the primary printer to avoid long periods of downtime by following these steps:

  1. Create a rule with the trigger “Print Job Failed”
  2. Choose a condition selecting the primary printer(s) you are watching for failures
  3. And the “Redirect print job” action, where you’d select the backup printer
  4. Optionally, you could also add an additional action to email the originating user to alert them their job is located on a new printer

 

We’re very excited about the new Rules & Routing feature and its benefit to our Output Management customers’ complex environments. Visit our website and schedule a demo today. Our Output Management team is available to discuss your organization’s needs, goals, and automation initiatives.

Best Practices When Implementing Centralized Print Management in an Enterprise

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It’s easier to keep track of things when they’re all in one place. That’s why centralized print management is such an important goal for IT teams. However, it can take a lot of work to implement in large organizations with many moving parts like different operating systems, printer models, locations, and user needs.

It’s even more challenging when your infrastructure is working against you. 

Print servers and other prototypical corporate printing solutions don’t allow you to view and manage everything from a single pane of glass. Instead of unifying the print environment, they fragment it.

However, with the right resources, centralized print management is more than just possible—it’s easy to implement. And the long-term payoff can be huge if done correctly. Read on to learn the best practices to implement centralized print management.

 

Eliminate your print servers

More infrastructure doesn’t equal more features and more convenience. This assumption is one of the most common mistakes in print management. It is also one of the leading reasons organizations end up adding print servers when their print environment is underperforming. Which, in turn, only creates more hardware to juggle and increases overall costs. 

And, after the PrintNightmare scare, admins wished they had eliminated print servers instead of adding to their fleet.

Serverless printing infrastructure empowers you to ditch your print servers. That’s because it uses direct IP, which creates one-to-one connections between computers and printers without servers. At the same time, it helps bring the entire print environment together. All of those client/printer relationships are housed under one solution and managed from a single console.

 

Simplify printer deployments and driver maintenance with a single console

If your organization is after centralized print management, chances are you’re looking for a more streamlined print experience for admins and end users. Centralized print management gets you one step closer to simplifying deployments by providing a single console that allows you to deploy printers with just a few clicks and manage your printer drivers from a single repository. 

Admins can add new printers or make changes to existing ones effortlessly. They can even use Active Directory criteria to set up advanced deployments. On the other hand, end users can leverage Self-Service Printer Installation features to install printers by themselves—drastically reducing helpdesk intervention. 

 

Find a scalable solution 

When you think of traditional direct IP printing, the term “scalable” doesn’t usually come to mind. But server-based corporate printing solutions aren’t very scalable either. To scale up, they always call for more infrastructure. Otherwise, performance goes downhill.

A serverless printing infrastructure enables print environments to become incredibly scalable. Even ones that are growing. If you open or acquire a new location, you can import its printers automatically. There is no need to airdrop another print server to service a new office. 

 

Prioritize print security

Protecting your printers has become as commonplace as locking your door before you leave the house. It’s more than necessary. And you don’t want your property to get stolen. 

So, how do you keep threats out of your print environment? 

It’s simple. Require your users to have a key (password) to be allowed inside. 

When you eliminate your print servers and move to cloud printing, you open the door to integrations with IdPs, which mandate users to verify their identity before giving them access to necessary applications—including printing. On top of that, serverless print management offers advanced security features like pull printing, requiring a second layer of authentication before print jobs are released. 

 

Consider your sustainability goals

Businesses are doing all they can to create a more sustainable workplace, not just in terms of future growth, but also making an intentional effort to lower consumable usage to help the environment. Printing is, of course, a great place to start. 

Centralizing your print environment by eliminating your print servers does wonders for your sustainability initiatives in a few ways, including:

  • Reducing the amount of electricity used by print servers
  • Removing unused printers from your print fleet
  • Providing features like pull printing to create intentional printing habits
  • Setting limits on maximum print job size to cut back on paper usage
  • Tracking and auditing print jobs to calculate print costs per user, group, and department

And these are just the basics. 

Sure, you could just ask people to print less, restrict access to most printers, and cross your fingers that they’ll print duplex. However, serverless printing gives you control over what end users can do and provides the features and functionality to make sustainable printing almost automatic. 

 

Get proven results with SaaS print management 

Moving to a serverless print management solution allows admins to eliminate print servers and get centralized print management on a single platform. 

Take our customer, Aquafin, for example. 

This large Belgian wastewater specialist first went from hundreds of Novell IP printers to four Windows print servers. Then, it migrated again to PrinterLogic’s fully serverless printing infrastructure. At each step of the way, our solution helped Aquafin apply best practices and get optimal results. Read the case study here.

Large or small, your organization can do the same. Schedule a demo of PrinterLogic today and get a 30-day free trial to discover how quickly and seamlessly you can achieve centralized print management in your print environment.

Print Management in a Hybrid Environment

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Hybrid print environments can take many forms. 

For instance, one hybrid environment might comprise a mix of new and legacy printing devices. Another might be a combination of mobile and desktop users. Yet another hybrid environment might piecemeal together printing software or print management services to serve the unique requirements of different user pools. It’s not uncommon for some hybrid environments to include a little bit of all of the above.

But the burning question is: How do you simplify print management in hybrid environments?

We’ll answer that. But first, let’s delve into the difficulties IT teams are facing.

 

The Problems With Print Management in Hybrid Environments

As workplaces move away from traditional desk-based models and become more varied, hybrid environments are increasingly the rule rather than the exception. That inevitably creates problems for IT, where standardization is typically the most efficient and reliable way to administer the organization’s hardware and software infrastructure.

However, standardizing your print management services can be difficult when your managed print environment is a kaleidoscope of printer makes and models interfacing with different operating systems, client devices, and users.

One of the biggest challenges to pain-free print management is user acceptance. Adopting a uniform printing software solution might be welcomed by the IT staff, but if it means your end users have to compromise functionality or jump through extra hoops, that solution can quickly turn counterproductive. Users who are frustrated or confused (or both) by printing will inevitably call the helpdesk. Instead of proactively handling the organization’s managed print environment, admins and support staff are stuck reacting to printer issues and support tickets.

 

Creating the Ideal Hybrid-Managed Print Environment

A hybrid-managed print solution should be easy to administer, transparent to the end user, and improve the print workflow—irrespective of front-of-house variables like OS, department, client type, or printer model. Ideally, it should do these four things:

  1. Allow an organization to streamline infrastructure without sacrificing functionality and security. 
  2. Enable admins to oversee and maintain their managed print environments from a single pane of glass. 
  3. Provide powerful print management services and advanced functionality without resulting in a lumbering Frankenstein of add-ons and third-party software.
  4. Extend printing capabilities to hybrid employees by offering an easy way to print to network printers instead of relying on vulnerable home office printers (nearly 66% of companies are worried that home office printers pose a risk to their security). 

Simply put, the perfect print management solution for today’s hybrid workforce unifies and streamlines the print environment while providing infinite scalability, incredible user-friendliness for admins and end users, and next-generation features like mobile and off-network printing.

 

The Solution: Serverless Print Management

Serverless print management software allows organizations to eliminate print servers from their managed print environments, removing the need to deploy, operate, maintain, and upgrade remote print infrastructure. At the same time, it integrates seamlessly with any existing printer fleet and many print management services, even in complex Citrix and VMware virtual environments, which allows for quick, smooth initial migrations followed by effortless administration from that point on.

All of this is possible with PrinterLogic.

PrinterLogic’s SaaS print management solution combines next-gen, centralized management with the proven reliability of direct IP printing. 

That means:

  • Admins escape the hassle of establishing every client–printer connection. And, unlike common alternatives to direct IP, PrinterLogic’s serverless platform eliminates print servers and removes their single points of failure.
  • Admins and authorized support staff can deploy printers and drivers according to criteria like Active Directory (AD), IP address range, and MAC addresses—without relying on GPOs or scripts. 
  • End users can install printers themselves through PrinterLogic’s Self-Service Installation Portal. Instead of choosing from long lists of printers, which increases the risk of incorrect installs, they can identify nearby printers using the optional floor plan maps and install them with just one click. This feature has reduced helpdesk calls by up to 95% for some organizations.

But how does serverless printing benefit IT teams and hybrid employees?

If your environment requires constant mobility and security, PrinterLogic offers various features that enhance the printing experience for hybrid employees, including:

Off-Network Printing: Empower hybrid employees to print to any network printer from the comfort of their home office, a cafe, or a hotel for later pick-up. Your print data doesn’t remain at rest in the cloud and stays encrypted until it is behind your organization’s firewall. This feature removes infrastructure costs like VPNs, hosting services, and external access portals. 

Mobile Printing: Enable users with any mobile device, regardless of OS, to print to authorized printers. There’s no client-side software to install, and it works with any new or legacy network printer. Mobile, BYOD, and guest users can print quickly, reliably, and easily to on-location printers no matter where they happen to be.

Secure Release Printing: Boost security with a two-step print-and-release workflow to ensure that end users are physically present to claim their jobs. Release options include CAC/PIV, badge or card readers, web browser, and ID/PIN entry at the control panel. In addition, PrinterLogic’s QR code release method allows for a secure, convenient pull printing release mechanism without investing in any dedicated print release infrastructure.

 

Get Stress-Free Print Management Free for 30 Days

Despite the nuances and complexities of hybrid environments, PrinterLogic removes the barriers that make it difficult for managed print environments to adapt. While realizing time and cost savings through their ability to eliminate print servers, our print software solutions empower end users, increase organizations’ flexibility, and equip them with a robust print management platform built for enterprises of all sizes.

To see firsthand how PrinterLogic can unify and enhance your hybrid print environment, request a demo for a free 30-day trial today.

Reduce Printing Costs With Effective Print Management Software

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Many organizations begin researching print management solutions to eliminate (or avoid) print servers and introduce greater efficiency and simplicity into their print environment. That could be through features such as centralized administration, self-service printing for end users, auditing and tracking—or a combination of all of the above. 

 

What makes a print management software “cost-effective”?

The best print management software minimizes infrastructure and synergistically leverages modern print features to help companies reduce costs and increase return on investment (ROI). 

What’s often overlooked is that it takes a holistic system to generate maximum cost savings. A piecemeal approach through one or two discrete print management solutions that are limited in scope and function will only result in piecemeal cost reductions—not counting the fact that each solution also requires a separate investment.

In multiple case studies conducted by the independent research firm TechValidate, PrinterLogic is a print management solution that reduces printing costs and commonly generates an ROI of around 200% or more. A few more organizations have reported an ROI as high as 500%. 

But how does PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution help companies generate such an astronomical ROI?

Read on to find out how admins drive down costs with PrinterLogic. 

 

Elimination of Print Servers

Print servers aren’t just big fancy boxes in your server room. They cost money to install, maintain, upgrade, and replace. Quorcirca estimates the average cost to maintain and license a print server to be around $3400 yearly. Not a small number, especially when working with a few of them. What’s worse is the time and productivity wasted because of not-so-unexpected issues, including server crashes, failed deployments, and slow printing speeds. 

PrinterLogic replaces your print servers with a serverless, direct IP printing solution, eliminating all those financial outlays. Implementation is quick and easy, too. Using our automated migration tool, you can move all printer objects and drivers from your print servers to our centralized Admin Console—which we’ll cover more in the next section. 

 

Centralized Administration

After implementation, admins can manage, edit, create, and remove printers across the enterprise—no matter how distributed the print environment—from a single pane of glass. PrinterLogic is true SaaS print management software that gives you full visibility into and control over every printer in the organization, ultimately saving countless hours previously spent grappling with the finer points of printer management. 

On top of increased oversight, admins can identify underutilized printers to help minimize the company printer count and reduce electricity consumption. 

 

Self-Service Printing 

End users of all skill levels can easily view, identify, and install nearby printers themselves with an intuitive Self-Service Installation Portal. Users can simply open the customizable floor plan map or drop-down list to access nearby printers. Admins can add or subtract printers from the user’s view at any time within the Admin Console, helping eliminate unwarranted access to specialty printers or printers used by specific departments. 

This feature alone results in up to 95% fewer print-related helpdesk calls, saving time and boosting employee productivity. 

 

Comprehensive Tracking and Auditing

PrinterLogic provides a crystal-clear window into all aspects of your print environment—including the quantifiable details of page counts, ink and toner usage, and more. This alone can account for massive reductions in printing costs, as it provides a basis to monitor and address the individuals, groups, and departments responsible for the overuse of consumables. To keep executives informed on print costs and volume, admins can set up automated reports to be emailed monthly, quarterly, or yearly. 

 

Optimized Printer Uptime

In its ability to remove single points of failure and print-halting issues like driver conflicts, orphaned printers, and stuck jobs, PrinterLogic provides your organization with a print environment synonymous with rock-solid reliability. Less downtime means more revenue and fewer costs devoted to troubleshooting.

If a printer does need servicing, SNMP Monitoring and Alerts with PrinterLogic helps admins take care of printer issues before they happen instead of taking on bush-league helpdesk calls like “printer needs paper” or “printer is low on ink.”

 

Eco-Friendly Printing

It’s hard to find solutions that can lower costs and promote sustainability. 

PrinterLogic makes it possible in two ways:

  1. Adding a simple step before printing to create intentional printing habits.
  2. Empowering admins to configure default printer settings.

Features like pull printing and Secure Release Printing ensure that users authenticate at the printer before they print. Since print jobs are held in a queue instead of going directly to the print tray, users can cancel accidental color print jobs, documents with typos, and duplicates that would otherwise increase costs. They can authenticate via various methods, including QR code release, web browser, badge swipe, or by entering a PIN on the printer control panel. 

To prevent users from accidentally printing in color or simplex, admins can configure printer settings to default to greyscale and duplex after each print job. This can be done en masse or to individual printers, depending on the needs of your end users. 

 

Advanced Print Security

According to IBM’s 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report, the average cost of a data breach globally is $4.45 million. And this number has risen by 15.3% in the past three years. 

So, how does PrinterLogic ensure you’re not a victim of a print-related data breach?

PrinterLogic extends the security of your print environment to your mobile employees and remote workers via Off-Network Printing capabilities. Instead of end users relying on unsecured home printers to print sensitive information, remote users can print directly to any networked printer in the office to pick up later or collaborate with a colleague to ensure its retrieval at the printer.

PrinterLogic adds a Zero Trust layer of security to your print environment via integrations with popular identity providers. All users must authenticate and verify their identity before accessing printers in your environment. And, to top it off, our SaaS print management solution is ISO 27001:2013- and SOC 2 Type 2-certified which helps your company stay industry-compliant and protects your critical data. 

For more info on security and privacy with PrinterLogic, click here.  

 

Calculate Your Potential Cost Savings

We’ve shared the cost-saving features of our SaaS platform. But how can you put a realistic dollar amount on your savings after eliminating your print servers? 

Our print savings calculator accounts for print server maintenance costs, consumable usage, and printer driver updates to help you generate your potential savings after eliminating your print servers with PrinterLogic.

Try the free print savings calculator now.