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.  

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. 

Webinar Recap: Print Security Hacks for 2024

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Security has long been atop the IT agenda. Customers demand it. Your business continuity depends on it. And it can greatly impact your bottom line if not implemented strategically.

But what are the main security focuses going into 2024? And what steps can you take to put your organization in the best position to protect precious customer and employee data in 2024 and beyond?

Vasion’s Principal Architect, Greg Smith, and Director of DevOps and Security, Justin Scott, sat down for a quick chat about Print Security Hacks for 2024 to share their knowledge on the best (and fastest) ways to achieve Zero Trust-caliber print management.

Watch the video below or read on for a short summary of the webinar. 

What’s top of mind in 2024?

You’ve constantly been asked to “Do less with more” when it comes to your current infrastructure.

But that still isn’t enough.

In 2024, the ask is a lot greater: Implement airtight layers of security that protect confidential data and maintain industry compliance BUT don’t decrease productivity or inconvenience end users.

A long-winded ask…we know.

Justin and Greg highlighted the following key criteria that are top of mind for CIOs and IT Directors for their print environments in 2024 to help you meet security demands.

  1. Zero Trust: Verify every end user before they get access to print applications.
  2. Federated Authentication: Access all apps with just one password to increase productivity.  
  3. Online Identity Providers (IdPs): Ensure secure access across all apps.
  4. Remediate Vulnerabilities: Update and patch existing hardware to keep attacks out.
  5. Reduce Attack Surfaces: Minimize infrastructure by removing underutilized printers and print servers. 
  6. Maintain Compliance: Leverage solutions that comply with ISO and SOC security frameworks. 

It’s possible to check these off your list rather quickly. However, there’s one piece of legacy hardware that needs to be addressed before you can optimize your print security in 2024: your print servers. 

 

What do print servers ACTUALLY do?

Being the status quo for over 25 years, it’s easy to forget why we have print servers in the first place. They’re a messenger between a client and your printers that queue print jobs to ensure your hardware never gets overloaded. 

Originally, servers were lauded for providing admins with centralized management, better print security, and improved print speeds. However, as businesses expanded, created new locations, and increased their print traffic, the immediate response for many IT pros was to put up more print servers to accommodate end users and equally disperse WAN traffic. Which, at the time, was a genius idea. 

Print servers have withstood the test of time, until recently, that is. They’re the primary cause of print-related helpdesk tickets, and they’re pricey to maintain and replace every three to five years. In short, print servers could be costing you more money, time, and headaches than they’re really worth. 

 

The security risks of print servers

Vulnerabilities exploited within print servers aren’t a secret. 

In 2010, StuxNet, a powerful malware, revealed itself to the world by exploiting a vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service. Eleven years later, the PrintNightmare exploit allowed attackers to take control of a vulnerable system. Since PrintNightmare’s emergence in 2021, there have been over 65,000 attacks on Windows Print Spoolers, 31,000 of which happened in 2022.

So how do you ensure these attacks don’t happen to you? 

Eliminate your print servers and get direct IP print management in the cloud.

 

Top questions to ask print vendors

So, you decided to move away from legacy print infrastructure and transition to a cloud-based print management solution. Naturally, you’re going to have a lot of questions about migration time, potential printer downtime, costs, and expected limitations you’d like to address—which are usually clearer after trying a demo with a new solution. 

Greg and Justin crafted a list of questions you can ask vendors upfront before investing your time and effort in a proof of concept.  

 

Conclusion

Implementing Greg and Justin’s print security hacks for 2024 doesn’t require you to search far and wide. PrinterLogic SaaS, our cloud-native direct IP print management solution, equips your organization with the features and functionality you need to print securely and protect your data for long-term success. PrinterLogic is ISO 27001:2013 and SOC 2 Type 2-certified and integrates with popular IdPs to authenticate all users before they print. 

Visit our website for more information. 

Or, schedule a free 30-day trial with one of our experts today.

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.