Friday, September 20, 2013

Printing Securely and the Danger of Social Media

Fellow employees, today's IT tip concerns printing sensitive data/information (i.e. performance appraisals, client records, etc.).

To print the previously mentioned types of documents, the best way to do so is to use the 'Secure Print' feature available on many of our large copier/printers. Secure Print allows a user to set a password on a print job. Thus, the job isn't printed until the user walks to the machine and enters in the password he/she assigned to the print job.

Dan Scheingold, our IT Specialist, created a  step by step guide regarding  how to use the 'Secure Print' feature; it is available on SharePoint within the Public Documents Section, http://voadvdm/Documents/How%20to%20Secure%20Print.pdf.

Besides providing everyone an extremely useful tip, I would also like to use this little piece of inter-web pie to remind everyone of the danger social media poses to our network. Besides, consuming lots of memory (since the sites constantly update), they (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) harbor malware, malicious computer software that interferes with normal computer functions or sends personal data about the user to unauthorized parties over the Internet. We have, too many times, needed to clean infected servers, adversely impacting the important work of our employees. Therefore, we advise everyone to limit browsing to social media sites and other non-work related sites.