The COVID-19 pandemic completely changed how many organisations operate – businesses had to quickly adapt to new ways of working, and the rise of remote workers and their printing requirements led to new challenges.
With remote and hybrid working now here to stay, we look at why implementing a managed print service that covers both office-based teams and remote workers could provide the level of security and control required in your print strategy.
In this blog, we will discuss how introducing a Managed Print Service that covers all of your workers, regardless of their location, can help to satisfy many of the challenges that remote printing can create for your organisation.
At-Home Printing Security Risks
Due to the speed of having to get remote workers set up during the pandemic, many home users used their personal printers for any work documentation they needed in paper form. As these devices are often shared with the rest of the family, this does create some serious data protection issues, and printers can be a real cyber security weakness within a network.
Using at-home printers causes several problems – aside from the evident nature of the device possibly being shared with other residents of the home, which could lead to sensitive data being unintentionally shared.
Controlling your organisation’s print costs can also be tricky if people use their own machines – allowing users to print freely can significantly increase your print budgets.
Home printers can also be a security concern and are an often overlooked source of weakness on a network. In a 2022 Quocirca survey, 67% of respondents were concerned about print security, and a staggering two-thirds of organisations have experienced data losses around printing.
Why you should consider an MPS that covers your remote workers
When you bring your remote workers under your MPS contract, it allows you much more control over their activities – you can introduce print quotas to individual users and even restrict printing from certain applications that may house more sensitive data.
The introduction of pull printing can also be helpful if you are worried about printing security and ensure users must be in front of a device before printouts are delivered.
A sizeable remote fleet of printers outside an MPS contract can prove to be a logistical nightmare for an IT department. When you have an MPS contract in place, you can remotely manage, troubleshoot and repair the hardware and maintain total visibility over your print ecosystem.
Cost savings are also a hot topic within organisations, and print costs can quickly escalate in a remote setting. Your supplies team may be providing many different brands of ink & toner, and you may have users printing in full colour, where mono may suffice.
Under your MPS, you can ensure that print users have the correct quota of printing for their needs and can even set all the machines to print duplex to save paper resources. Consumables will arrive when they are needed and in controllable quantities, plus the advantage of a uniform fleet brings economies of scale with purchasing.
The Need for Secure Printing
Sensitive documents mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. GDPR states that any company hosting or collecting private data must protect it from being viewed by third parties. This applies to printing too – if employees are printing things from contracts to statements and those papers are left behind in the printer, it could violate GDPR.
Organisations must prove that they have an effective, documented & auditable process for GDPR that covers printed materials and must include practises for collecting, storing and destroying data. An MPS will provide the necessary information audit to show who has accessed and printed data and allows you to develop policies to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands.
The landscape has changed in the last few years, and remote working has brought challenges that businesses have had to adapt quickly and not always correctly – if you have remote workers within your organisation, now is the time to start thinking about their printing needs.
It may be that you are considering moving to a managed print service or even possibly considering trying to eliminate print altogether within your organisation then. Parallel can help. We offer a free print audit which can include your remote devices – please get in touch with us today and one of the team will be in touch with you to organise your report.