Your organization’s security – including print security – should have its own well-defined persona because, frankly, procedures, solutions, and strategies are great but people are complicated.
We can all agree that as we peek ahead into 2024, cyber security was, is, and will remain a huge priority for businesses today. But are you and your employees all on the same page on how we get there? That's an entirely different question.
Company culture is, in a nutshell, the living, breathing personality of your organization. It’s not “jeans on Fridays.” It’s the values and behaviors that your people take with them into the office every day. It’s important, too. Consider that (according to PWC), 67 percent of executives prioritize company culture over their organization’s strategy or operating models.
Your organization’s security – including print security – should have its own well-defined persona because, frankly, procedures, solutions, and strategies are great but people are complicated. IT security resource KnowBe4 defines security culture like this: The ideas, customs, and social behaviors of a group that influence its security.
How can you, and your print security partner, work together to develop a strong print security culture in your organization? Here are 5 items both parties should keep in mind.
5 Components to Building a Strong Print Security Culture at Your Company.
1. Reinforce the necessity.
Cybersecurity measures aren't anything new to your employees. They've likely heard about phishing and Ransomware, and maybe even taken training courses on how to avoid these threats. But perhaps reminding your employees that your copier/multi-function-printer is essentially another device on your network helps reinforce the urgency of print security.
It has motherboard. It has drives, and it stores sensitive information. Increasing this simple awareness can go along way to employees jumping on board with Print Management procedures.
2. Find the positives.
Change is universally hard, no matter what. Users may at first may scoff at the idea of their job being sent to a secure hold/release que (I'm so used to printing and it's already there!). But look at it this way... the job WILL be there, and you're no longer bound to a specific device. You're no longer bound to a particular printer, so you can walk over to the one that's easier for you at any given time. We're talking print security, but we're also talking about making life a little easier for you!
It's a simple, great way to turn the attitude and culture around a Print Management solution.
3. Examine the behavior.
KnowBe4, after years of research, distilled what it calls “dimensions of security” culture to help guide the behavior of employees. Here are those seven “dimensions.”
- Attitudes are defined as the feelings and beliefs that employees have toward security protocols and issues. They are commonly expressed in terms such as prefer, like, dislike, hate, and love, attitudes involve a preference for or against something.
- Behaviors are defined as the actions and activities of employees that have direct or indirect impact on the security of the organization.
- Cognition is defined as the employees’ understanding, knowledge and awareness of security issues and activities.
- Communication is defined as the quality of communication channels and their effectiveness at discussing security-related events, promoting a sense of belonging and providing support for security issues and incident reporting.
- Compliance is defined as the knowledge of written security policies and the extent that employees follow them.
- Norms are defined as the knowledge of and adherence to unwritten rules of conduct in the organization. In the context of information security, “norms” describe how security-related behaviors are perceived by employees as normal and accepted or unusual and unaccepted.
- Responsibilities are defined as how employees perceive their role as a critical factor in sustaining or endangering the security of the organization.
4. Understand real-life job processes.
This one falls solely on the print security partner. How can they offer a solution if they don't understand your environment? If something in a job process breaks, work stops and frustration accelerates. Partners need to spend time fully understanding print/scan processes, asking themselves what are the bottlenecks? How can we prevent this what a workflow solution? How can we cut down unnecessary steps to get a print job done?
Happy workers, happy culture.
5. Always be onboarding.
A sound onboarding and training session is important. But it's just the beginning. Workflows, print behavior, user needs... they all change.
What I've learned as a solutions specialist over the years is that most organizations are only using a sliver of what the capabilities are for a given product. A partner should routinely check back with you to share new capabilities and ask the simple question, "Has anything changed in your environment?" They should evaluate your scan/print processes and be actively sharing the constantly expanding set of capabilities that a Print Management solution brings.
Time to pick a partner? Pick one that's a good cultural fit.
At Datamax, Culture Trumps Everything. As your Print Security and Print Management Partner, our objective is two-fold: Fully secure your environment and get you back to focusing on your forte... your business. To learn more about how we can help, schedule your visit with a technology specialist!
