Risk management. It’s such a common term that you might think every organization is practicing it. But one very recent enterprise survey showed that only about half of the 445 respondents were actively engaging in some form of risk management.
That survey informed the 2019 The State of Risk Oversight report from the ERM Initiative in the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University. Among other things, the report found that just 46% of the organizations had gone so far as to create a risk-management policy statement. Only a little over 40% had established guidelines for assessing risk probabilities and impact.
If we can all agree that risk management is vital to protect our organizations against things like data breaches and malicious actors, why are so few of them putting it into practice and codifying it?
The truth is that there are dozens of reasons why an organization might not formally implement or document a risk-management strategy. There’s at least one thing we can be sure of, though. It’s that printing and enterprise print management can play a significant role in managing risk. And when done right, it can even require fewer resources.
Print Security and Its Role in Risk Management
One of the most effective ways to mitigate risk in enterprise printing is through centralized print management. It pretty much goes without saying that the ability to oversee and configure every aspect of the print environment from a single pane of glass would lead to increased print security. Because it gives admins way more visibility and control.
Centralized print management is a core benefit of PrinterLogic’s serverless print infrastructure. Using the intuitive web-based admin console, IT can monitor and manage print queues, configure precise printer deployments and even enforce advanced default settings.
Another way to beef up print security is through PrinterLogic’s auditing capabilities. With print auditing, admins can keep tabs on the who, what, when and where of print activity across the print environment. Reports can be automatically generated and emailed to department heads or the risk-management team.
And PrinterLogic SaaS, our cloud solution, now includes the powerful auditing functionality of PrinterLogic Insights. This new feature lets managed service providers and customers to monitor up to ten printers completely free of charge.
Along with providing admins with more oversight, PrinterLogic’s approach to centralized print management saves time, money and manpower. That highlights its dual benefit: More efficient enterprise print management coupled with more effective risk management.
Pull Printing as a Risk-Management Strategy
Pull printing is a slight tweak to standard printing in order to boost print security. What it does is break the printing process into two separate steps. In the first step, the user clicks “Print” as usual. Instead of automatically printing, though, the job is held. In the second step, the user executes (or releases) the print job at a printer.
When the second step of pull printing involves some kind of authentication, this is known as secure release printing. That mechanism can be a badge reader, a dedicated control panel app or even CAC/PIV reader in high-security scenarios.
From a print security and risk management standpoint, the benefit of pull printing is pretty obvious. It prevents sensitive documents from being seen or taken by unauthorized users. A common cause of that vulnerability is print jobs being abandoned in output trays. But the intentionality of the release/authentication step means it’s unlikely that users will print to the wrong printer by accident. Or if a user forgets they hit print on a document, then that job is simply never executed.
Involving End Users in Risk Management
Successfully minimizing risk through enterprise print management hinges on your end users. If something like pull printing is too complex or cumbersome, they’ll find ways around it.
PrinterLogic’s centralized print management allows admins to configure and enforce enterprise-wide print security at the user level with just a few clicks. By the same token, it makes security features like pull printing easy for users to understand and adopt. That helps your end users become a natural part of your overall risk-management approach.
Hunton & Williams LLP is just one example of an organization that recognized how PrinterLogic introduced print security by design. Through PrinterLogic’s centralized print management and full-featured mobile printing, this international law firm gained more control and more oversight over its print environment. All without inconveniencing its end users. Read the case study here.
To take PrinterLogic for a spin in your own print environment and see how it can contribute to more holistic risk management, start your free 30-day trial today.