Practical Considerations For Imaging and Printing Security
The IT security climate has changed. While in the past the challenge has been to convince customers of the need for security, the current need is to show how a product’s security capabilities complement a customer’s existing security environment.
Security measures have evolved through the years, from firewalls that kept intruders out, to sophisticated virus throttling systems that detect viruses before they take hold and prevent them from spreading. Attacks now often originate from inside the network, for example: employees take advantage of access, wireless networks are improperly secured, and unaware users introduce viruses or worms to the secure network.
As attacks increase in sophistication, hardening the internal network’s security—from clients and servers to the imaging and printing infrastructure—becomes critical. Further, regulatory requirements, including Sarbanes-Oxley and the Health Insurance Portability Protection Act, are mandating protection accountability.
The Power of Visual Communication
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? In this age of multimedia and mass communication, it often seems so. Recent research supports the idea that visual communication can be more powerful than verbal communication, suggesting in many instances that people learn and retain information that is presented to them visually much better than that which is only provided verbally. These are welcome findings to anyone whose work involves using visual presentations to persuade or instruct others. Even more welcome is the news that today, presenters have more resources than ever available to them for creating and displaying the most visually rich programs possible.
Communicating Effectively In The Visual Age
Visual communication is everywhere today, from electronic media like Web pages and television screens to environmental contexts such as road signs and retail displays. As the National Education Association has pointed out, ”Western civilization has become more dependent than ever on visual culture, visual artifacts, and visual communication as a mode of discourse and a means of developing a social and cultural identity.” 1 That’s an interesting observation, but what’s even more intriguing is that there is evidence to suggest that people not only communicate visually more than ever, they also communicate better when they communicate visually. This is an important revelation to those who create presentations for work or education and who want to make those presentations as compelling and effective as possible. This paper is designed to help presenters make the most of this information by describing the evidence for the power of visual communication, identifying the key components of effective visual presentations and discussing the technologies that make it possible to use these components to craft more successful presentations.
HP Boosts Quality and Value of Graphic Arts Photo Printing
HP today introduced two digital press solutions with capabilities that improve photo printing quality and color consistency.
The company also announced that output for HP Indigo presses has received a Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR) Display Permanence rating of approximately 45 years, the first of its kind for a digital press.(1)
The new press solutions are designed for photofinishers, professional photographers, yearbook publishers, print service providers and other graphic arts professionals.
- The HP Indigo WS6000p offers professional portrait output quality as a high-quality, low-cost replacement to silver-halide systems.
- The enhanced HP Indigo W7200 Digital Press improves color management and consistency for high-volume printing of photo specialty products, including photo books.
HP additionally launched a partner solution from M-photo to manage professional lab workflow for HP Indigo presses and silver-halide output devices. HP also announced the general availability of the ARTtrust self-certification system for photographers and artists using HP Designjet Z Series Professional Photo Printers.
“Digital has crossed the gap between traditional and digital photofinishing in terms of quality, productivity and consistency, and now digital printing surpasses silver halide for photo permanence,” said Christopher Morgan, senior vice president, Graphics Solutions Business, HP. “HP’s solutions are accelerating the shift to digital, creating new business opportunities for print service providers, publishers and photographers.”
One Driver to Rule Them All: The Universal Print Driver
With the need for multiple printer brands, models, and devices within an organization to handle an assortment of printing needs, firms have become accustomed to supporting dozens (if not hundreds) of printer drivers as a necessary evil. This multi-driver environment results in higher costs, the negative aspects of which may have previously lacked consideration. With the arrival of the Universal Print Driver, this is an area where improvements can and must be made.
Hewlett-Packard recently announced the second iteration of its Universal Print Driver (UPD), which is focused on streamlining the print processes and operations within an organization by employing a single driver to handle all supported HP-branded devices. The benefits of a product like this appeared obvious. The necessary investment for UPD is minimal—the driver is essentially free, it requires little training, and it can be up and running within an organization in a matter of weeks. InfoTrends believed that the “return” on such an investment would be substantial for help desks and IT departments as well as end-users, offering a consistent printing experience across a multitude of devices. As this white paper will show, users are in fact experiencing a variety of benefits from this type of driver.
HP Helps Organizations Reduce Business Risk with Transparent Records Management
HP today introduced a records management solution that enables customers to significantly reduce the business risks associated with the growing regulatory compliance and legal discovery demands.
HP TRIM 7 – an advanced records management solution built on 24 years of experience and best practices – enables organizations to transparently manage all of their Microsoft SharePoint Server records in a single environment, regardless of the source. This includes documents as well as information found in SharePoint Server blogs, wikis, discussions, forms, calendars and workflows.
Widespread adoption of SharePoint Server provides the opportunity to consolidate and simplify the management of content stored across multiple SharePoint instances. HP TRIM 7 enables the transparent capture, search and management of all types of physical and electronic business information, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the upcoming SharePoint Server 2010.
“Organizations today need solutions to manage the explosion of large volumes of information,” said Mark Gilbert, research vice president, Gartner. “New solutions are growing rapidly for authoring and managing enterprise content in various formats and sources, and this trend is truly changing the way organizations do business.”
“The explosion in Content 2.0 blogs, wikis and discussions creates new information management challenges for organizations trying to meet an escalating set of regulation,” said Jonathan Martin, vice president and general manager, Information Management Solutions, HP. ”HP TRIM allows customers to marry records management best practices and governance with dynamic collaboration platforms such as SharePoint.”
IQ MFP...The Electronic Filing Solution That Makes You More Efficient And More Profitable.
Independent studies by major auditing firms indicate that most businesses lose one out of every twenty documents they create or receive. The costs associated with lost or simply misfiled documents mount quickly.
In partnership with HP, Informa Software delivers a solution that eliminates the time wasted looking for documents and the cost of making unnecessary copies.
Simply scan from the front panel of an HP mfp and file your document with a few keywords. Unlike copier-based mfps, IQmfp allows the input of index keywords from your desktop. All document types and search fields are custom-definable. IQmfp will also capture documents from MS Office applications or any Windows file type through the native Windows “Send to” feature with a few keystrokes.
Security at the document type, user and group levels insure that only authorized users gain access to documents.
Using an intuitive browser-based search, IQmfp can find documents by keywords or data ranges. Documents are displayed in the industry-standard Adobe® PDF Reader, allowing you to save, print, e-mail or even fax as necessary. IQmfp saves you money by dramatically reducing labor and other operational costs. Fewer trips to the filing cabinet and copier mean more employee productivity. Finding information quicker means being more responsive to customers, which translates directly into a competitive advantage.
HP LaserJet 4345mfp Series for Distributed Capture
While many organizations have invested heavily in enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, many have difficulty in bringing the benefits of those investments down to the individual workgroup level. Many small departments and distributed workgroups are still plagued by manual paper handling and routing processes that create huge inefficiencies and potentially costly errors. Moreover, few workgroups have an easy way to get their business documents into the content management system or into a business process quickly enough to improve their operational efficiency.
To address the document capture and processing needs of workgroups and distributed environments, HP provides the HP LaserJet 4345mfp series. These multi-function products (MFPs) are available with two software options (Digital Sending Software 4.0 and HP AutoStore) that allow workgroups to easily capture documents, extract relevant data, index the documents, and distribute them to multiple destinations (including fax, e-mail, shared network folders, directories, and content management systems). In addition, the HP LaserJet 4345mfp series provides workgroups with all the benefits of an MFP, including printing, copying, scanning, faxing, and digital sending capabilities – all from a single device.
Integrating Color Into Your Printing Strategy
As color printing becomes increasingly accessible and affordable, more organizations than ever are making it a standard part of the office printing environment. To get the most value from an investment in color printing, it’s critical to incorporate color into the environment in a planned, informed way. That means making decisions about how to invest in, deploy and use color printing that are based on solid information about what documents need to be printed in color and which users will be involved—just as you would for other printers and devices in the environment. Integrating color printing into an overall printing strategy in this way makes it possible to “manage the device to manage the cost” and thereby maximize the return on an investment in color printing.
The value of color Successfully incorporating color into your printing strategy begins with recognizing the strategic value that color brings to organizational communications. As Don Jones points out in The Definitive Guide to Color Office Printing, “Color communications can improve comprehension by 75 percent over black-and-white communications. Readership of color documents can be 40 percent higher. Training materials can accelerate learning from a rate of 55 percent to a rate of 75 percent.”* This impact creates strategic value through its potential to positively affect revenue and productivity.
Revenue impact
For example, in the financial-services industry, advisors who counsel individuals on their financial future must often present complex information about investment options in the form of charts and graphs that may be inherently difficult to understand due to the amount and type of data contained in them. Color can help customers understand this information better by drawing attention to key figures and conclusions, making it easier for them to get the information they need to make appropriate investment choices. This in turn creates the potential for positive revenue impact for the financial-services provider that is presenting various investment options to the customer.
HP Strengthens Security Capabilities to Help Customers Protect Data and Combat Business Threats
HP today introduced a security services portfolio and new solutions that offer increased vulnerability assessment, enhanced data protection and improved compliance controls, enabling customers to reduce infrastructure risks.
The addition of new services and solutions to the HP Secure Advantage portfolio helps customers establish a comprehensive security strategy encompassing key areas of the technology infrastructure – from the data center to desktops and printers – across the enterprise and via the cloud.
HP LaserJet MFP End-To-End Security
Protect your multifunction products, output, network communications, and management with HP.
Despite the critical roles networked imaging and printing resources play in the processes and workflows of large and small organizations alike, IT professionals frequently ignore security threats to the imaging and printing infrastructure and often leave it entirely unsecured. Imaging and printing environments aren’t currently a primary target for network attacks, but this will likely change as hackers find traditional servers more difficult to exploit and look for other targets.
If IT fails to safeguard these valuable resources beforehand, attacks against unsecured network communications can endanger data confidentiality, which can increase litigation exposure and compromise compliance with government and industry regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Patriot Act, the California Database Protection Act of 2001, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB), the Basel II Accord, the IPv6 Mandate, and SEC rules.1 For example, print and digital-send jobs sent via traditional 802.11x networking can be intercepted, compromising the confidentiality and integrity of the information.
Imaging and printing security threats will undoubtedly increase. For instance, the Computer Security Institute reported in its 2005 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey that unauthorized access rose dramatically in the last year and replaced denial of service as the second most significant contributor to computer crime losses. And recent publications by hacker groups have raised the awareness that imaging and printing devices are more than simple appliances and that these devices have capabilities beyond printing and scanning. Unauthorized data access isn’t the only problem, either — denial-of-service strikes against networked MFPs and printers can diminish productivity, and unauthorized device usage can deplete consumables stocks and increase supplies costs.
