How to Adopt Zero Trust Printing
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:
- 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.
- 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
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.
- Zero Trust: Verify every end user before they get access to print applications.
- Federated Authentication: Access all apps with just one password to increase productivity.
- Online Identity Providers (IdPs): Ensure secure access across all apps.
- Remediate Vulnerabilities: Update and patch existing hardware to keep attacks out.
- Reduce Attack Surfaces: Minimize infrastructure by removing underutilized printers and print servers.
- 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.
Serverless Printing and the Modern Digital Workplace with AWS
Together with leaders from Amazon Web Services, we’ve examined what a modern print management solution looks like.
IT needs a solution that meets the demands of a modern digital workplace. Modern print management should support every OS and printer manufacturer. It should also support modern identity and access management technologies. If it checks those boxes, all while keeping printing on the local network, you’ve got a winner.
PrinterLogic’s AWS-hosted SaaS offering is a true SaaS solution. In this blog, we’ll cover:
- How PrinterLogic SaaS integrates with AWS to deliver modern serverless print management
- How the AWS Digital Workplace provides an ecosystem of secure and collaborative solutions
- How to support printing in Zero Trust environments and flexible workplaces
But first, let’s define and discuss the four tenets of a serverless printing infrastructure.
What is a serverless printing infrastructure?
Implementing a serverless printing infrastructure means eliminating print server architecture and utilizing a cloud-based solution to manage, track, and deploy printers. Along with eliminating print servers, serverless printing helps IT teams centralize their print environment, providing admins with a bird’s-eye view of all printer objects, drivers, and users across distributed office locations.
Companies are striving to remove infrastructure faster than ever before. According to Gartner, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model built in the cloud by 2026. And SaaS print management plays a vital role in any organization’s digital transformation. Moving from on-prem, physical resources to cloud-based solutions is critical to any digital workplace transformation.
The four tenets of a serverless printing infrastructure
So, what exactly are the requirements of a serverless printing infrastructure? PrinterLogic CTO Corey Ercanbrack maintains that there are four, which we’ll highlight and describe below.
A modern SaaS architecture
Implementing SaaS-based solutions removes the need for expensive VPNs. VPN failures create bottlenecks. Not to mention, legacy systems require constant IT intervention, including security patches and upgrades to keep your hardware up-to-date.
The immutability and microservices ingrained in SaaS solutions are critical components that allow for fully automated environmental scalability. These also prevent problematic breakdowns. These components, along with multi-tenancy, allow for speedy updates and delivery of services as they become available. Print jobs must stay local in the user domain, leveraging a direct IP protocol. In short, SaaS architectures encourage a better security posture and eliminate single points of failure.
IT infrastructure integrations
Ask more significant questions that take into account your IT roadmap as a whole. It’s bigger than users, printers, and print servers. It helps to think about WAN, BYOD, virtualization/DaaS, IdPs, and how to print across operating systems and multifunction printers.
Ask yourself, “What will my printing infrastructure look like years from now? And, what steps can I take to future-proof it?” Consider how your print environment will integrate with business analytics platforms and other business intelligence software to drive you toward a fully digital workplace.
User-based security
One important consideration should be the path of print data. Direct IP printing provides better security since print jobs are sent directly from the workstation to the printer.
Combining localized print jobs with Secure Release Printing and multi-factor authentication (MFA) features is integral to preventing print data loss. Open Identity Access Management dictates that the user is more important than the device. Auditable Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) allows for compliance and an improved security posture. These all align with existing infrastructure integrations.
Off-Network/Zero Trust printing
The fourth tenet of a serverless printing infrastructure is to keep print jobs local. With this in mind, consider other BYOD flexibility challenges. How can you deliver print functionality when the MFP in front of a user is on a different network? To access that service, you would need an external service available via a public internet connection and a local encrypted secure tunnel, creating hoops for IT to jump through just to maintain security.
Serverless printing should extend Zero Trust printing capabilities to hybrid employees by empowering them to print securely to any network printer, regardless of their location. Authorized off-network users simply verify their identities via IdP, access the SaaS application, and select the network printer they wish to print to. In this scenario, all jobs remain encrypted until they reach the desired printer. This eliminates the need to print confidential documents to unsecure home office printers.
Print management in the modern digital workplace
Now that we’ve defined the requirements of a serverless printing infrastructure, let’s look a little more closely at how AWS makes it possible.
The AWS Digital Workplace delivers an ecosystem of secure and collaborative solutions. Kristen Escobar, Global Segment Lead for Digital Workplace at AWS, explains why: “When we say ‘Digital Workplace’…We are talking about the technology and the services required to support the end user daily, allowing them to work securely from anywhere on any device.”
“Work anywhere on any device.”
This statement may be poignant for IT pros. As employees slowly return to the office, there’s more interest in dynamic workplace models like hoteling and hot desking, creating a demand for BYOD support. Those new models create new challenges for IT and possibly for those who show up late to the office.
What makes a modern digital workplace?
Technology users today are either consuming, creating, or manipulating content. They do this either individually or in collaboration with others. And it’s possible only with a device and an application.
The digital workplace defines the functions and mechanisms required to get the content to the user while enabling interactive collaboration and communication in a secure and accessible way.
When we look at developing a truly digital workplace, three key areas stand out:
- Endpoint management
- Application management
- Collaboration
The digital workplace identifies solutions that manage these components effortlessly. It provides a simple-to-use and practical remote work or remote learning environment.
It’s important to note that we are not looking at the business applications themselves. Instead, we are looking at the mechanisms by which these applications are delivered, managed, and secured for remote users.
The combination of these principles and control operations allows us to define the function of a product or service. AWS has made it easy for PrinterLogic to provision a very secure, brand-new instance of their software. In a matter of minutes, it allows a defined printer object to be silently deployed across all operating systems.
Better Together: PrinterLogic SaaS + AWS
Since the beginning, PrinterLogic has shouted from the mountaintops to “eliminate your print servers.” In 2016, that message got louder when PrinterLogic and AWS partnered together.
The goal? Deliver a true SaaS solution to enterprise printing.
Since then, PrinterLogic and AWS have combined forces to leverage the following technologies and deliver a seamless print management experience:
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Amazon Simple Queue Service is a fully managed message queuing service that helps you decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS removes the complexity and overhead of operating message-oriented middleware and empowers developers to focus on differentiating work.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon EC2 provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Using Amazon EC2 removes the need to invest in hardware upfront. This allows you to develop and deploy applications faster. You can use EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need. You can configure security, networking, and manage storage.
Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity. This flexibility means you can reduce your need to forecast traffic.
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. It combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases. Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales.
It delivers high performance and availability with these several features:
- Up to 15 low-latency read replicas
- Point-in-time recovery
- Continuous backup to Amazon S3
- Replication across three Availability Zones (AZs)
PrinterLogic and AWS add incredible reliability and continuous delivery for print management. PrinterLogic SaaS is built on microservices that customers don’t have to patch or upgrade. They can reap the benefits of the new service as it comes online.
With PrinterLogic’s platform leveraging these technologies, IT departments everywhere can celebrate. Gone are the days of hearing, “The print server is down, and we can’t print.”
With increased printer uptime and productivity, you might actually miss your end users a little bit.
Highly available print management built for the future
PrinterLogic, combined with the power of AWS, can help you take a big step toward digital transformation. You can say goodbye to legacy, on-prem infrastructure. A modern print management solution is possible with PrinterLogic SaaS and AWS.
PrinterLogic is available on the AWS marketplace and offers a 30-day, fully supported free trial of the software after trying a demo.
Request a free demo and 30-day trial of PrinterLogic SaaS today.
Guest Printing Made Easy
You know that familiar saying that goes “Guests, like fish, smell after three days?” The inventive guy who coined it—Benjamin Franklin, as it happens—clearly had the unrelenting demands of hospitality in mind, but the sentiment behind it could just as easily apply to enterprise print environments.
No, guest printing has never been particularly pleasant for anyone. Guests either have to go through the long, complicated, and often frustrating process of installing printers and their related drivers on their personal machines while the IT staff scrambles to make sure they have the necessary access, or they have to find some way to transfer their files to an authorized workstation for someone else to print. Mobile devices add even more difficulties to the mix. All these roadblocks demonstrate why guest printing problems are widespread.
PrinterLogic changes all that with two options for guests:
- Email Printing — enables an end user to forward an email (from a smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to a printer that has been explicitly designated for printing from email.
- Off-Network Printing — a secure, Zero Trust solution for guests that allows them to send print jobs to a printer located behind the company firewall without a VPN or special firewall rules.
Guest Printing Is Simple and Secure
Here’s what makes guest printing with PrinterLogic simple:
- Guests, contractors, and freelancers can print from any mobile device, anywhere, anytime via email-to-print functionality.
- It integrates rapidly and seamlessly into any print environment running PrinterLogic.
- Thanks to PrinterLogic’s built-in capabilities, any network printer can handle guest print jobs.
- It’s secure. You retain complete control over which users, printers, and jobs are authorized.
With a guest printing solution like PrinterLogic, all your guests—among them contractors, freelancers, consultants, and even remote or BYOD employees—can print any file type with the same simplicity as sending an email. From any device—on- or off-network.
It doesn’t matter whether your organization employs 10 or 10,000 employees, whether it’s distributed over two cities or two continents, or whether you’re running legacy devices or cutting-edge hardware. Plus, there are no print servers or proprietary third-party software or printers to install or add.
Does that sound far too simple to eliminate guest printing problems? The strength of guest printing with PrinterLogic actually lies in its simplicity. To print, all guests have to do is follow three easy steps:
- Obtain the dedicated email address for their desired printer.
- Email their files. These immediately enter the print queue like any other job.
- Pick up the printed documents at the printer.
It’s so straightforward, in fact, that it’s been repeatedly shown to cut down on the number of print-related service desk calls in real-world scenarios. That saves your guests time and energy, boosting their satisfaction and productivity, and it also saves your IT staff from having to field calls about installation woes and other guest printing problems.
Yet there isn’t a trade-off when it comes to oversight. Guest jobs can be audited according to criteria such as user, file type, and printer—just like jobs initiated from a workstation. Plus, you can set any number of limitations: monochrome-only printing, for example, or restricted access to certain paper trays.
Off-Network Printing Makes Hybrid Work Easy
Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA) has become necessary in these days of hybrid work. While many companies may be looking at returning to offices, we all know hybrid and remote work is here to stay. And that means ZTNA needs to be in place now; it isn’t something IT teams can continue to push down the road.
Because of that, PrinterLogic created its Off-Network Printing feature. Here’s what you need to know about it:
- Print jobs are encrypted end-to-end so sensitive data is never exposed or at risk.
- Security is further enhanced with confidential data never at rest in the cloud, limiting risk factors common with traditional print solutions.
- It mimics regular printing—which means you don’t have to train guests or employees on how to use it.
- It’s supported on iOS and Android devices without the need to install client-side software.
What does all of that mean for you? Well first, it means fewer costs. Off-Network Printing reduces infrastructure and lessens the need for home printers. Second, it’s far more secure and gives your company more visibility into when confidential data is exposed. And third, it’s easy. No more dealing with workarounds or VPNs for printing.
So how does it work? Well, for your employees and guests, they basically get to print like normal. They can even utilize Secure Release Printing to hold the print job until they release it, keeping the printed information protected as well. On the back end, two components make it work:
- The External Gateway receives incoming print jobs from remote workstations, their user identity, and a trusted certificate over a safe TLS connection.
- The Internal Routing Service resides behind your firewall and maintains a constant outbound connection with the External Gateway to watch for print jobs.
When the External Gateway receives a print job, the Internal Routing Service opens a new connection for that job. It then downloads and delivers it to the designated printer. If the Secure Release Printing feature is used, the job then waits for the user to release it at the printer using credentials, a QR code, or a badge.
It’s that easy.
Guest Printing Should Not Be Hard
In today’s world, being able to keep business moving forward without unnecessary complications is vital to success. And printing is often something that IT teams hate dealing with. PrinterLogic makes it easy for your team to stop worrying about print and instead focus on keeping your company on the cutting edge of the next big thing. Check out PrinterLogic’s full serverless platform for additional capabilities that can help your business now and in the future.
Your Guide to Secure, Uninterrupted Printing with SAP
This blog is part of a three-part Output Management series about the Oracle Health EHR, Epic, and SAP connectors. Read the other installments on Epic and Oracle Health EHR.
SAP is the world’s leading ERP solution that processes operational data and manages complex business processes in enterprise organizations. Organizations, like manufacturing and distribution that require continuous delivery of printed orders and invoices to keep their systems running, rely on highly available printing methods.
Print Servers and High Availability
The typical method of printing from SAP is through a print server—often Windows print servers. On the back end, SAPWIN hands an initiated job to a print server running SAPSprint, which then processes and delivers to a standalone SAP print queue to finally be printed.
Windows print servers may do the job of managing the high volumes of printing from your SAP environment, but what happens when hardware fails and halts printing? Microsoft deprecated print spooler clustering in Windows Server 2012 and instead, to maintain redundancy, put their print servers behind a load balancer to split print traffic. Unfortunately, when a print job has already been received or a print queue has an error, those jobs won’t print and often the load balancer won’t detect the failure.
Connection interruptions and hardware failures aside, print servers in complex print and output webs require continued maintenance by trained IT professionals which fills up daily schedules. We’ve spoken to admins like you who struggle with the demand of managing complex print server environments. We recommend:
- Reducing print server hardware
- Consolidating front- and back-end printing
- Adopting Zero Trust values
If you’re asking yourself, “Is this even possible?”, we have the answer, and PrinterLogic has the solution you’re looking for.
How can I reduce print server hardware while maintaining redundancy?
The end-to-end process without a print server is simple when you have PrinterLogic facilitating your back-end printing from SAP. Here’s what that process looks like:
All of your existing print queues are migrated into PrinterLogic using our built-in migration utility. From there, you can deploy those queues to your end users automatically. If you’re an existing PrinterLogic customer, you have likely already done this and are one step ahead!
Your print job originates from your SAP environment and is sent over TCP 515 to a designated Service Client, a lightweight desktop LPD Service that intercepts your jobs from SAP and routes them to your printers. These can run anywhere you want, but we recommend hosting them on an existing utility server used for other (non-printing related) tasks. You can spin up multiple Service Clients to achieve redundancy and high availability that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do with your old print servers. Your print job data and metadata are received and analyzed by the LPD Service to determine where and how it will be printed.
A copy of the job persists in your own configured storage solution until the job is printed; either via direct IP printing or held securely until manual release with no threat of interruptions from connectivity loss. That’s it! All without the need for print server clustering.
What is meant by front- and back-end printing consolidation?
There is generally a disconnect between SAP back-end printing, print server management, and general office printing. With PrinterLogic’s cloud-based Administrative Console, administrators can have control over all back-end configuration and redundancy and the entire printing lifecycle, while still maintaining visibility to front-end printers and print activity. No more managing a web of print servers and output locations when the entire process can be consolidated on a unified platform from a single pane of glass.
How can I adopt Zero Trust on top of all of this?
We understand that managing network security in a complex net of print servers is time-consuming and stressful (that’s why we got rid of our print servers). Zero Trust levels the playing field for all employees by demanding verification from everyone. There are a few print methods that follow this principle:
- Off-Network Printing allows your guest or contracted users to print without you giving them access to the local network. Off-network jobs pass through a load-balanced gateway on your instance, then release via authentication at the printer.
- Secure Release Printing holds print jobs on the queue until identity authentication at the printer to ensure all proprietary information gets into the right hands. PrinterLogic offers these features and more in our add-on Advanced Security Bundle.
In addition to secure print methods that help you adopt a Zero Trust environment, there are new features currently in progress with our development teams, which will offer even more output and print management capabilities.
Why PrinterLogic?
It just works! PrinterLogic gives you centralized administration control to ease your security management burden while maintaining high availability in every print job. We think you’ll be pleased with what you see.
We’d love to hear from you and discuss the PrinterLogic Output Management solution further. If you’re interested in interfacing with a member of our team, contact your PrinterLogic representative or schedule a demo here.