Printer Priorities

Written by Deb Donston; illustrated by Brian Moore

Security was on the minds of many IT pros who eWEEK Labs asked about printers. Said one CIO, Remember, printers are inside the firewall and thus are trusted–big mistake.’

At one site, on-board cache was replaced and a printer was turned into a device that mapped and scanned the internal network for vulnerabilities. And printers with large internal hard drives have been turned into file sharing and FTP sites for warez.

Two IT managers brought up printer disk dangers: In many default configurations, printers cache the print jobs on the internal disk for quick reprints of a job. If the admin interface isnt secured or the cached jobs arent stored in an encrypted format,

Many printers, especially older high-end multifunction printers, use Windows NT. They havent been patched, which is a recipe for disaster, says one IT pro. And the vendors apparently never thought about it and made no provisions for doing so.

One IT manager offered up a host of printer priorities, including centralized printer management (management of devices and print queues); printer standardization and outsourced servicing; color printing management; confidential printing (HR, finance, exe

The future of printers? Three-dimensional printers are amazing, gushed one respondent, and the price is now down to $50,000 for color. These devices can be used to print models of prototypes for production/marketing and of full

Where are printers on the IT departments priority list at your organization? Write to Deb Donston at debra_donston@ziffdavis.com.