“At Ricoh, we are committed to delivering customized solutions to vertical markets and healthcare is certainly among the most complex, most regulated markets we support,” said Ron Nielson, Vice President, Healthcare, Ricoh USA, Inc. “We realize that this industry must adhere to stringent security, patient experience and budgetary requirements and our solutions aim to directly address them. With this device series, we built the flexibility, speed and security right into the device helping healthcare organizations do more with fewer steps.”
Ricoh recently announced a series of black and white devices designed to address security and space while staying in budget, especially beneficial to the healthcare industry. The Ricoh MP 501SPFTL/SP 4510STE multifunctional printers and Ricoh SP 4510DNTE/SP 5300DNTL printer series were designed with security enhanced firmware key to protecting sensitive information. Both the MFP and printer series are equipped with a locked print tray, which meets the strict requirements to protect pre-printed prescription paper. In addition, the print trays are Teflon enhanced to help handle the specialized media healthcare providers need, like wristbands and labels for their patients. Whereas regular printers jam and misfeed when the labels’ adhesive accumulate on the print trays, the Teflon is designed to prevent this from slowing down the hospital admission process. Ricoh printers also come equipped with the Ricoh Smart Device Connector, which uses the Ricoh Smart Device Print & Scan app.
This Ricoh series is built for healthcare with capabilities like sending regulated and standard media to a single printer without interrupting workflows to change jobs or wait for jobs with regulated media to finish. Advanced firmware helps to keep regulated media and standard media jobs apart, so you no longer need to use a separate printer dedicated to locking down regulated media.
Due to security being one of the most important features on this new Ricoh series, let’s take a deeper look into the importance of security on printers:
With printers and MFPs being used 78% of the time for confidential documents, more for the healthcare industry, and having access to an internal hard drive, network connection, and an online interface, many are left vulnerable when little to no protection is in place. With confidential documents you are open to physical document theft, digital document theft, rerouting print jobs, and stealing from discarded printers after disposal when proper security measures are not put into place. What can be done?
First, always place your printer in a place that is inaccessible to unauthorized individuals. It should be a easily controlled area, or like with the Ricoh printer series discussed, have a printer that can be physically locked and only authorized personnel can access the device. And don’t forget to have IT wipe the device of any data before disposal.
Second, secure your digital information being sent to the printer with an encrypted connection. Many printers support encrypted connections including SSL/TLS and IPSec which ensure messages sent between your computer and printer stay safe. Also, don’t forget to have IT update your firmware and driver to add new feature and extra security against known issues.
