Secure Pull Printing: What Is It And Why Does Your Organization Need It?

At a time when every organization is striving to reduce its carbon footprint and cut down on waste, IT solutions that help with this plight can be invaluable. Secure Pull Printing is one such IT solution, but its benefits don’t just stop at waste reduction. As its name suggests, Secure Pull Printing also enables organizations to reap a number of security benefits, too.

What is Secure Pull Printing?

Secure Pull Printing, also known as Secure and PickUp Printing and Follow-me Printing, is a type of print security that requires users to authenticate at the printer before their job will print. This means that even if someone were to gain access to an unsecured printer, they would not be able to print any documents until they had first authenticated themselves. There are many different ways to authenticate at a printer, but the most common methods are through a badge reader, entering a PIN code, or using biometrics.

With Secure Pull Printing, business users print a document from their computers to a virtual print queue. The document remains in this secure queue until the user authenticates to a printer and collects it. Secure Pull Printing configurations usually involve having one large multifunction printer on each floor of an office building which multiple business users can use.

Secure Pull Printing Benefits

There are several benefits of Secure Pull Printing, including:

Increased security

As we mentioned above, increased security is one of the main benefits of Secure Pull Printing. By requiring users to authenticate at the printer, you can ensure that only authorized users will have access to printed documents. Furthermore, with Secure Pull Printing, the chances of someone printing a sensitive document and then leaving it on the printer are virtually eliminated.

Chain of custody remains intact

A chain of custody is a chronological record that outlines every stage of a document’s lifecycle. Under GDPR rules, being able to show a specific document’s chain of custody is critical. Secure Pull Printing provides organizations with a way to better handle their records and more easily comply with chain of custody requirements.

Reduced costs

Another benefit of Secure Pull Printing is that it can help reduce costs. For example, if you have a printer that is used by multiple people in your organization, you can set it up so that only certain users have access to color printing, and this helps to save on ink costs. In addition, because users are forced to authenticate themselves before pulling print jobs off of the printer, instances of printing documents and then forgetting them are also significantly reduced. This decreases the amount of paper waste and again saves on ink.

Increased efficiency

Secure Pull Printing can also increase efficiency in your organization. It does this by eliminating the need for users to remember which printer they need to use for their job. With Secure Pull Printing, users can simply send their print job to any printer and then authenticate at the device they want to use. This can save a lot of time and frustration, as well as increase productivity.

No more need for local printers

Most organizations want to move away from the traditional on-desk printer setups they’ve traditionally had and switch to a centralized system. Local printers not only present a headache for IT staff, but they can also be costly to maintain. Secure Pull Printing enables an organization to replace local printers with an even more secure solution.

Find Your Secure Pull Printing Partner Now

The good news is that while Secure Pull Printing might sound like a complicated and costly solution to implement, there are companies out there that specialize in helping organizations like yours realize all of the associated benefits as cost-effectively as possible.

To find out more, visit SEAL Systems’ Secure Pull Printing page

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