We've all been scared to death by tales of doom from the impending GDPR , so in my handy guide below I have 5 quick ways to keep your printed documents secure.
There are several reasons why you may want to do this. Most of us these days have access to a multifunction printer that has use by several people.
The chances of someone picking up your printing by mistake (or on purpose) are quite high. It could be that you are printing wage slips, HR letters or other personal data.
Just think how many times you have walked to the printer and found several other sheets of paper either sat in the tray or discarded on top. You’ve probably also gone to the machine to collect and they aren’t there so you reprint, only then to bump into a colleague who apologises and gives you the first set of prints you did.
There is also the scenario where you put the letter head or expensive card in the printer and shot put across the office for nobody to print whilst you run out the proposal your are doing. By selecting your prints from the machine you can select which media you want to print on.
Most modern (in the last 10 years) have many in built features that enable users to print securely.
1. Print to user box.
This is where a preset up user box (folder on the copier hard drive) is set to receive documents from an individual user. Each user could have their own user box to print to.
Nothing is immediately printed off the machine, when the user access the control panel they can select prints stored on the device earlier (usually the device is set to print then delete the job) if jobs aren’t retrieved it can be set to delete after say 12/24 hours.
2. A Password can be set on the users individual user box.
All prints are sent in the same way as above, but now in order to retrieve the prints a password has to be input first.
3. Account tracking with pin numbers.
Individual users are pre registered at the machine and print jobs are authenticated using the pin number (this can be a pop up on the users pc screen or hidden in the back ground of the driver. The user would then re input the pin number at the device in order to print from user box) these can be open or password protected .
4. Account tracking using proximity chips (access cards or key fobs).
Access to the device can be limited by having to present a card or fob to the copier. This can be the same card or fob already used to open doors in your building (it will just need to be scanned to find the type of RFID chip inside).
Then in the same way that a pin number is pre registered behind the users print driver, the card serial number is pre registered and then access to printed jobs is gained by flashing the card to the copier.
5. Secure print.
This is where each job that is printed is given and individual user name and password. These then have to be re input at the device in order to retrieve the job.
All of the above have been implemented by my team here at Copy Print. The great thing that we have noticed as an extra benefit from the security is the cost saving.
We have customers who have saved 20% of their print budget by simply implementing some of the points above.