A Programmatic Approach to Print Security

The following is a guest blog post by Sean Hughes, EVP Managed Document Services at CynergisTek. Print devices are a necessary tool to support our workflows but at the same time represent an increasing threat to the security of our environment. Most organizations today have a variety of devices; printers, copiers, scanners, thermal printers and even fax machines that make up their “print fleet”. This complex fleet often represents a wide variety of manufacturers, makes and models of devices critical to supporting the business of healthcare. Healthcare organizations continue to print a tremendous amount of paper as evidenced by an estimated 11% increase in print despite the introduction of the EHR and other new systems (ERPs, CRMs, etc.). More paper generally means more devices, and more devices means more risk, resulting in increased security and privacy concerns. Look inside most healthcare organizations today and even those with a Managed Print Services program (MPS) probably have a very disjointed management responsibility of their inventory. Printers are most often the responsibility of IT, copiers run through supply chain with the manufacturer providing support, and fax machines may even be part of Telecommunications. Those organizations that have an MPS provider probably don’t have all devices managed under that program – what about devices in research or off-site locations, or what if you have an academic medical facility or are part of a university? These dev...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Healthcare Devices HealthCare IT HIPAA General HIPAA Training Medical Privacy CynergisTek Healthcare Printer Security PHI Sean Hughes Source Type: blogs