The Datamax Thinking Blog

While you’re focused on securing your network against obvious threats like phishing attacks, ransomware, or firewall breaches, cybercriminals are slipping in through the least expected route: your office printers.

Imagine you’ve got a high-end security system for your house: Motion sensors, cameras, smart locks on every door. You’ve even got a guard dog. But out back, there's a rickety old gate swinging open in the wind. No lock. No light. Just a quiet, unnoticed way in.

Windows Protected Print (WPP) is Microsoft’s new, more secure printing system. Why the change? According to Microsoft , 9% of Windows security issues reported to the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) were caused by print stack-related issues.

Microsoft is preparing to transform how organizations manage printing. With the upcoming introduction of Windows Protected Print (WPP), your business should start getting ready for one of the most impactful changes to enterprise printing in years. If you oversee—or depend on—print infrastructure, it’s essential to understand what WPP is, why it’s a big deal, and what steps you need to take to get ready. Let’s break down what this means for your print operations and your customers.

Enter PaperCut: a powerful print management solution designed to secure your print devices, streamline your workflows, and cut unnecessary costs. 

It’s been said that "the little things matter. Often, they matter the most.”

Printing may seem insignificant when shoved alongside big-time topics like security and cost control… but it shouldn’t. Unsecured print environments put your sensitive data at risk, while unmanaged printing leads to waste and unnecessary expenses.

If your provider doesn’t have a solid review process for invoices before they’re sent, errors can slip through. This often happens in companies with understaffed or overwhelmed billing departments. 

In life and in business, there’s perhaps nothing more frustrating than repeating the same error over and over again.

Hold that thought. Inaccurate invoicing can be pretty frustrating for you, too. So, when your copier provider continues to send invoices that are either indecipherable or just flat-out wrong, it can put a major dent in the long-term partnership… regardless of the actual equipment performance.

If everyday printing functionality is frustrating, or if controlling costs is cumbersome, print management is a viable solution for both higher education and K-12 environments.

As an administrator, do you often feel like your school has overspent on print?

Among the many core objectives of any K-12 district or higher education institution, one dual component of most schools’ goals is to maximize the student experience while minimizing wasteful spending, at all “costs.”

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.

A proficient IT administrator derives satisfaction from automating tasks to enhance productivity, responsiveness ... and positivity.

IT staff fatigue is a real thing. It’s an issue often explored in  Nexthink's Pulse Report. Back in May 2020, we learned that 43% of IT leaders cited increasing support tickets as their biggest challenge since the start of the pandemic. “Since then,” reads the report, “70% of tech leaders we polled said their ticket and call volume continue to spike, with a majority of those reporting increases up to 50%."

For schools and their print environment, it’s about managing print behavior and costs in order to maximize their allotted budget. Print Management can help with that.

Schools are unique animals when it comes to printing.

So many users. So many types of devices. So many types of documents, all of which are essential to classroom functionality. On top of that, the classroom (and technology therein) is changing rapidly. Whether education is conducted on-site, remotely, or in a combination of both, the technology utilized should seamlessly integrate with different educational applications and offer cost-effective features, enabling schools to make the most of their resources.

PaperCut Hive is a fully hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that allows cloud-first organizations of any size, regardless of their printer brands, to easily enable and manage printing with just an internet connection.

For organizations looking to best utilize technology to support their everyday business, cloud adoption continues to be all the buzz in 2023. A few statistics from Zippia that support such a claim:

• 94% of enterprises use cloud services.
• 67% of enterprise infrastructure is now cloud-based.
• 92% of businesses have a multi-cloud strategy in place or in the works.

Rather than relying on traditional on-premises print servers, cloud print management leverages internet-based technologies, enabling users to send and manage print jobs from any device, anytime, anywhere.

Thomas Edison's motto was said to be this: "There's a better way to do it — find it."

In today's fast-paced business world, finding more efficient methods for anything can be a game-changer, your print environment being no exception. Enter cloud print management, a printing solution that combines the power of the cloud with the convenience of printing, all of which gives your IT administrators and end users valuable Peace of Mind. For many organizations with a consistent need for printed documents, it's simply a better way to do it.