Security has taken the top priority in enterprises; to maintain the confidentiality of data. Printing from a shared printer can never be categorized into a secure system and could impede violations for certain ISO certifications. Ricoh has designed proximity cards for shared printers which print from the allocated printer when the requestor is next to the printer.

Just like the access cards used at offices which uses an infrared light to access the authorization code in the card, the proximity card enabled printer prints only when it gets a signal from the user's access card. No more abandoned print-outs and leaking of information. The user is not required to swipe like credit cards but just need to enter a PIN or get close to the printer(say around 3 inches). The requestor can also scroll through the printing jobs and select the prints that's needed.

"You walk up and hold your card up, and automatically get the list of documents you've queued," said Craig Temple, document solutions product manager for Ricoh.

"Companies like [user authentication] security, but wanted to automate some of the process," Temple said. "Companies already using proximity cards [for front door access] can leverage them, or this may be the application that gets them to move to proximity cards."

The complete security suite comes with the software for card authentication which works on most MFPs and a USB host adapter is a necessary add-on. The USB host adapter has an approximate price tag of £75 while the USB proximity card reader is around £200.

via eweek