Security has never been higher on the corporate agenda.
A rising number of high profile cyber-attacks coupled with evolving legislation has seen everyone from the CIO to the CEO ask whether they are doing enough to safeguard the information within their organisation.
Organisations are trying to balance the need to secure their IT infrastructure with the adoption of new technology that is making their enterprise more efficient.
Printers are one component in the ecosystem that can sometimes be overlooked however can be equipped to enhance an organisation’s security credentials.
Secure printing within the organisational ecosystem
While an IT manager might challenge the influx of connected, smart or cloud-powered technologies, citing a risk to uptime, enabling technologies, such as printers, actually have the potential to enhance organisation-wide security.
Today, with so many data breaches (both malicious and accidental) dominating news headlines, organisations of all shapes and sizes are introducing more measures to prevent unauthorised building admission and restrict network access. However, one area that is often overlooked is the network-connected printer.
Printing securely doesn’t frequently find itself at the top of the CIO or CISO’s agenda. This should be more surprising than it sounds. After all, the value of the data that is processed by a printer is huge.
The most important documents to an organisation are sent to print
Most organisation-critical information and documents are sent to print and so it is essential that organisations ensure their print system is as secure as possible. Despite this fact, Quocirca found that 70% of European enterprises suffered from at least one print-related data breach in 2017 and astonishingly only 15% of these organisations think their printing infrastructure is secure. It’s not difficult to see where the problem lies and decision makers are quickly waking up to the importance of protecting these devices.
Why consider secure printing for your organisation?
The prevailing view is that a printer is just another piece of marginal office equipment or a point solution. But most fail to see that these devices can actually become assets when it comes to control and security around printing. Today’s office-class devices are much more sophisticated with embedded operating systems and support for cloud-enabled, integrated document solutions. By outsourcing these services to a solutions provider with expertise in security, these functions can actually increase the security of one of the enterprise’s main outputs, printing.
Managed Print Services (MPS) providers can offer integrated workflow solutions, which, when applied to the networked printing infrastructure can give organisations complete visibility and control of print processes.
Organisations can access information at the point of need:
- Driving productivity
- Automating workflows
- Managing content security
When hosted in a private cloud system, enterprises have complete assurances that their documents will never leave the local network, essentially keeping sensitive data safe. This private platform not only protects documents from external threat, but enables administrators to monitor costs and highlight any unexpected charges.
With these measures in place, Managed Print Solutions elevate printing devices to security assets. Investment in this type of solution will likely increase in the coming years, with 80% of decision makers across Europe stating they will invest in their document security in the next 1 to 2 years. With change afoot in the information security world, organisations who are ready to invest in technology innovations will reap the security benefits.
Safeguard cyberspace in your office
Get in touch to find out how to improve your office security in an IoT-connected world.
