Diode Applications: Secure Printing

November 2013

In this blog series, I have been exploring applications for Data Diodes. This week, I look at the issue of printing between different networks.

Printing is an everyday necessity for businesses. In order for employees to function efficiently it is essential that they have access to printing resources. Getting the printing capacity right is an on-going business challenge:

Too many printers and the servicing or service management costs become too high.
Too few printers and you end up with business bottlenecks, inefficiency and potentially increased services costs as printers run beyond specification.

In normal network environments this means having a printer connected to the company network that everyone can access. This is an easy task for companies who have standard business networks because there are no restrictions on connecting them together to access a central printing resource.

However, businesses that have multiple segregated networks of differing security classifications cannot connect to these shared printers due to networking constraints. Consequently, they cannot make use of shared printing resources connected to multiple networks, leading to an over capacity of printers.

Diode Applications: Secure Printing

With a data diode enabled print solutions a single printer to be connected to multiple segregated networks, without compromising security of the individual network. This derives business benefits of reduced servicing costs and space.

Interested in finding out more details about secure printing between network domains? Contact me, or leave a comment below.

Author Bio – Colin Robbins

Colin Robbins is Nexor’s Managing Security Consultant. He is a Fellow of the IISP, and a NCSC certified Security and Information Risk Adviser (Lead CCP) and Security Auditor (Senior CCP). He has specific technical experience in Secure Information Exchange & Identity Systems and is credited as the co-inventor of LDAP. He also has a strong interest in security governance, being a qualified ISO 27001 auditor.