Safety and Security Considerations Necessary for Enterprise MPS

By Eric Crump, Ringdale

Working and Printing from Home Offices

In the current climate, enterprises are relying more than ever on technology to enable work to happen seamlessly. In particular, there has been a significant increase in demand for solutions that help teams continue to collaborate, communicate, and operate as usual.

One application that can be overlooked and create issues for organizations is document printing. While much has been made about document digitization, we are still far from a paperless environment.  It is clear that paper volumes have decreased significantly over the past few months; however, there still remains a need to print in particular for healthcare, education and financial services sectors.  The challenge for MPS providers is to find ways to assist IT departments to ensure their employees, both remote working and office-based, have access to safe and secure, cost-effective print capabilities.

For those organizations with staff working from home based on the latest government advice, a key question is whether to provide “authorized” hardware for those staff or allow them to use their personal printing devices. For each organization, this decision needs to be made after considering cost, support requirements, convenience, security control, and in particular, compliance.  If remote workers have the capability to print documents including intellectual property, HR or customer information at home, IT managers need to have the ability to monitor this activity for data security purposes.  Deploying correct and non-intrusive control measures help to ensure (in the case of a data breach) effective compliance reporting can take place.

An alternative approach adopted by some organizations is to place a blanket ban on allowing documents containing sensitive data to be printed in the home office. In this case, organizations will need to provide alternative printing capabilities that allow their remote staff to print safely and securely back to the managed office environment.  Either way, MPS providers will be more successful to offer printing solutions that are effortless for employees to use, provide consistent auditing controls and do not add significant burdens to support staff.

COVID-Secure Office Printing

For many employees, remote working may not be an option and in these circumstances,  organizations are required to develop a COVID-secure health and safety plan based on guidance from the government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to allow workers and clients to return to their offices.  Ensuring employees have access to COVID-secure office printing facilities, whilst maintaining social distancing and reducing touchpoints, can be a particular challenge with networked print devices operating on a shared basis.

Fortunately, there are multiple ways to enable a touchless or a less-touch printing protocol to support COVID-secure office printing.  By understanding customer’s workplace environments and their operational needs, MPS providers have a unique opportunity to consult with organizations and provide the best solution that meets their specific COVID-secure requirements.

One easy way to provide a touchless solution is providing personal printing devices in the office.  Personal printing devices are making a comeback during the pandemic and provide a new opportunity for solution providers.

A more practical business solution is to take advantage of pull printing solutions with touch-less printing features.  Not only do pull printing solutions provide COVID-secure ways to print, they also promote social distancing allowing employees to print to the device they prefer.  It also provides multiple options for remote workers, when they come to the office, to be able to print wherever they need to work including printing from their personal mobile devices, as the workspace may constantly change throughout the next year.

Success through simplicity

Whether workers continue to work from home or return back to the office, MPS providers will be more successful by recommending simple and intuitive ways of working through the continuing pandemic, in tune with their customers’ needs.  As the workplace is already complex enough with the pandemic, MPS providers should research simple, secure and safe document solutions that avoid adding extra layers to customer’s office printing processes and potentially increasing IT department workloads.