Unauthorized Access Prevention for Secure Printing
Data. It is one of the most important assets in any organization. Protecting that data and any documents produced using that data should be a high priority. Having a rights management protocol in place can prevent loss of data and unauthorized access to that information.
Access to information is a right not everyone shares equally in many organizations. Different users, depending on job responsibilities, may have differing levels of access to information. Overseeing who has access to what information, also known as rights management, is often part of a larger print policy that encompasses all aspects of printing for the enterprise.
As the need to contain costs and more efficiently troubleshoot printing problems arose, there has been a move to have employees share printers. Today’s office environments often opt for a shared experience among multiple users particularly when it comes to printing and printing hardware. With more shared printers in the office, security and user access and user tracking is a concern.
Locking down Printing
It’s now common practice for printers to be locked down so that employees are required to authenticate their identity before they can access print files, also known as user authentication. This protocol may require an employee to input their digital identity such as a unique PIN code or to swipe their personal badge through a card reader, or even the use of biometrics to gain access and unlock printer functionality. This requirement that the user physically must visit the printer to provide their digital identity also reduces the risk of leaving a printed document sitting in the output tray unattended and is particularly important for high-value documents.
Most modern printer vendors support the ability to attach badge scanners or keypads that allow users to authenticate a print job prior to the device releasing and sending the job to be printed. Organizations determine how they want to require employees to identify themselves in order to unlock printer functionality and release their print jobs from a secure print queue (pull printing). Levi Ray & Shoup Inc. (LRS) works with most of the leading printer vendors and offers our MFPsecure®/Print solutions that assist with this security measure.
Limiting access
Data can also be secured by limiting which employees have access to certain kinds of data on the network. Users who don’t have access to certain types of data based on rules and policies would receive an unauthorized access message if they attempted to access data that was not defined in their individual permissions.
In an effort to ensure that all output, stored data and the hardware are equally secure, enterprises often set up these print policies that include rights management protocols based on an individual user’s job responsibilities, etc. In other words, not everyone may have the same rights and permissions as everyone else. Jobs are held in a secure pull print queue until user authentication is completed.
With cost containment and security both being critical aspects of any enterprise, it is important to be able to see who printed what, when they printed it and where it was printed. Organizations need the ability to perform user tracking and document tracking reporting. LRS® solutions provide document audit trail reporting capabilities that will help your organization monitor the security of printers and data.
Rights management
Organizations that have already developed a rights management plan in an effort to thwart unauthorized access have an advantage in that LRS solutions can hook directly into those existing plans. If you haven’t done this step already, it’s a good place to begin. A good rights management system will enable you to control what users have access to, what documents and applications are available to them, how they can be used, how long they can be used, and what locations they can be accessed from when in use.
For more information about our secure print management solutions, contact the document experts at LRS and let us help you address your security challenges.