For CIOs, CISOs, or CTOs in the healthcare sector, security is one of many competing priorities vying for investment. Print management can be an unlikely hero with some of the biggest wins for security leaders looking to do more with less.
Avoid misplaced and misprinted PHI with Secure Print Release
In a standard network printing environment, when a user prints from an application, the job is sent directly to the printer and starts printing immediately. This setup doesn’t work in a hospital where paper sitting at the printer (for who knows how long) could contain confidential patient information. Authentication at the device is the critical step here, to ensure the system knows the correct user is genuinely at the device and to release only the documents a user has selected via the screen.
The method of authentication, too, is an important security step. Give everyone a single-digit pin… easily guessable and far from secure! But request their network username and password or require a card and PIN — then you know that person at the MFD is who they claim to be!
More ways to make printing in our health organizations secure
Pull-printing, push-printing, follow-printing, or whatever you call it
Here at PaperCut it’s called Find-Me printing, but what is it and what does it do for me? Simply, it’s the ability for your users to send their print jobs to a single print queue from their computer or device, and release their jobs from whichever printer they’re closest to, whenever they want. And if this is one of those 15-20% times a print is never released, we’ll just securely delete it.
Regardless of how many printers are in your organization, end-user experience is simple and goes like this:
- All users print to a single queue using a universal driver.
- Users’ choices are simple, such as paper size, color vs grayscale, and whether to print single- or double-sided.
- Users walk to the nearest convenient printer, swipe their card, and hey-presto! — their print jobs will find them.
Secure fax delivery
In the healthcare space, most faxing applications are made available by third parties. And like most healthcare set-ups, you’re likely dealing with a mixed fleet of devices with users who have to authenticate numerous times to send one fax to multiple recipients one at a time, without the use of an address book or a quick and intuitive experience at the printer. And for the administrator trying to connect all the pieces of the puzzle, this environment is likely the best they’re able to accomplish to also ensure they can control who can send what where.
That’s why PaperCut is building a “catch-all” fax connector to provide an easy-to-use, user-friendly and secure faxing experience.
PaperCut is offering two types of secure faxing- the difference between the two quite obvious to our savvy Developer friends:
- API delivery: A more secure fax service where a file is sent to an endpoint and can receive a status along with allowing the user choose the recipient from an address book. An administrator may also set up a fixed destination (a scan action shortcut) to a specific fax recipient.
Generic SMTP delivery: We all know this as an industry standard that’s widely adopted, which means no more interoperability concerns. This is a great option for our users who are less concerned with speed and the extra layer of security an API delivery method can provide.
ecoprintQ is PaperCut’s leading authorized solution center. Experts in all things PaperCut, ecoprintQ is here to help you secure your patient’s health information with PaperCut. Contact us today to learn more about what PaperCut can do for you by emailing us at sales@ecoprintq.com or give us a call at 800.236.8499.
Don’t miss out on our PaperCut in Healthcare Webinar on October 7th! Be sure to register here!
