Managing the print configurations and capabilities of endpoints can be time-consuming work. When you’re also dealing with endpoints in distant branch or remote offices, the amount of time you need to sink into print management can really skyrocket.
In today’s enterprise, that’s as true as it ever was. Given all the casual threats and malicious actors that exploit weaknesses at the level of desktops, BYOD smartphones and, yes, even printers, endpoint management has also taken on a major security-related component in recent years. If you’re not taking extra time to lock down your endpoints, you’re leaving the door wide open to rogue activity.
Those two aspects—endpoint printing and endpoint security—overlap more than you might think. Features like centralized print management and pull printing can not only make branch-office IT administration more efficient. They can also harden the IT environment.
And with the right print-management solution, the potential exists for even more benefits: print-infrastructure reduction, increased ease of use and uninterrupted print availability. To name only a few.
Superior endpoint management
For a long time, most admins thought centralized print management and direct-IP printing were mutually exclusive. Then they discovered PrinterLogic.
Our serverless print infrastructure creates straightforward, one-to-one connections between endpoint devices like desktops and printers. Using legacy print-management solutions, those direct-IP connections usually have to be manually configured one at a time. Not with PrinterLogic. Instead admins can easily deploy direct-IP printers to users en masse—and without the need for GPOs and scripts. They can then manage the entire environment from a single pane of glass.
That clearly makes endpoint management across the enterprise a lot easier. It also improves security because it eliminates print servers as a single attack vector and a single point of failure. Furthermore, it allows for unparalleled oversight. With one convenient window onto the entire print environment, admins can keep better tabs on print activity.
Superior endpoint security
One ongoing—and often overlooked—security vulnerability is the printer itself. When users send important documents to the wrong printer or forget to pick up sensitive print jobs, that information risks being exposed. It doesn’t take a stone-cold cybercriminal to quietly walk away with the confidential report that someone left sitting in the output tray.
That’s why a lot of organizations have started to make use of pull printing. The main challenge here, though, is that pull printing is a bolt-on feature for many traditional print-management solutions. That can limit its scope of deployment and its compatibility with other printing solutions in the environment.
Pull printing from PrinterLogic stands out from the pack because it functions as an extension of our core print-management solution. Pretty much any network printer can be augmented with secure pull-printing functionality through our handy Print Release App for iOS and Android smartphones or our versatile new Control Panel Platform.
And for organizations that have existing badge systems or need government-grade authorization, PrinterLogic can integrate seamlessly with their CAC/PIV and ID-card authentication mechanisms. As customers like Georgia’s Fulton County School System discovered, implementing badge- and PIN-release pull printing with PrinterLogic is as close to “set it and forget it” as you can get (read the case study here).
Superior benefits
The thing is, the advantages of PrinterLogic don’t end with effortless endpoint management and enhanced security. The same direct-IP platform that allows for centralized print management and easy-to-implement pull printing also reduces print infrastructure through print-server elimination.
Another massive benefit is that PrinterLogic minimizes print-related WAN traffic. With print jobs now traveling directly between endpoints, data-heavy print jobs are no longer crossing the WAN. That reduces network congestion and can increase the speed of printing as well as the performance of VDI clients.
New Pig Corporation is just one of the many enterprise customers to see how implementing PrinterLogic for improved endpoint management resulted in incidental improvements across the print environment (read the case study here). They’d wrestled with the drawbacks of legacy print-management solutions for years before realizing that the status quo was holding them back.
Take a second or two and sign up today for a free demo of PrinterLogic. You’ll get the opportunity to test drive our solution for 30 days and experience the unprecedented ease of centralized print management firsthand. Chances are that you’ll never look at endpoint management the same way again.