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Printers and multifunctional devices (MFDs) are essential tools for government agencies and departments of all types and at all levels. MFDs with print and scan capabilities are particularly important to support digitisation in a world where communities and businesses demand greater access to, and more transparency of information.
Like 80% of organisations surveyed by Quocirca in 2022, governments are increasingly turning to cloud services for their print and scan applications as part of their strategy to achieve sustainability.¹
Thanks to the availability, flexibility, and scalability of cloud services, government agencies and departments can now reduce costs, become more productive, and better protect themselves against the threat of cyberattacks.
With on-premise print servers virtually eliminated, IT administrators are saving time traditionally spent on managing drivers, device configurations, firmware updates etc and instead redirecting their efforts to more proactive tasks. Additionally, government departments and agencies are significantly reducing financial and environmental costs associated with procuring and managing on-premises infrastructure.
Hosted on Microsoft Azure, uniFLOW Online is an advanced cloud-based print and scan management solution. This subscription-based SaaS product provides Government departments and agencies with superior enterprise platform security, scalability, and resilience.
An advanced platform, uniFLOW Online allows users to seamlessly print and scan documents, whether they're working from their department, home office, or a combination of both. Government organisations benefit from enhanced security, detailed reporting, and potential cost savings with comprehensive tracking and management of their users and devices within one platform. The result — print and scan infrastructure that's specifically designed to meet the needs of a modern workforce by offering simplicity, flexibility, enhanced security control and helps in reducing costs.
Within an increasingly complex digital world, authentication is crucial for securing access to your MFDs and vital for any data loss prevention policy. uniFLOW Online ensures device and document security by requiring users to identify themselves via card, pin, or their phone, before they can access any device features.
Device-function restrictions or Function Level Login can be set to control device access for departments, teams, or even individual users.
Maintaining document confidentiality is essential within government. With uniFLOW Online, users can print confidential documents securely, even when they’re printing directly from popular cloud services such as Microsoft Teams, google drive and SharePoint Online.
To release jobs from their personal secure print queue, users must first identify themselves at a device. When collaborating, they can delegate print jobs manually to colleagues or managers for release and collection from print queues.
A range of print submission options and integrations with third-party print services, such as Microsoft’s Universal Print ensures ease of use and flexibility. And, in the event of internet or cloud service failure, uniFLOW Online's Emergency Mode helps with business continuity, allowing users to continue operating as usual until the connection is restored.
These advanced, secured processes ensures maximum productivity and document security for Government departments and users alike.
Cloud services are less resource intensive than conventional print management, which is typically reliant on on-premise print servers. These servers incur significant capital investment upfront, along with a high, ongoing IT administrative burden. Driver installation, device configuration, monitoring, reporting and management, server and queue management, firmware updates, and app deployment and maintenance must all be accounted for.
With the onus on every government department to reduce costs, users should be encouraged to print only what they need. uniFLOW Online helps IT administrators do this by enabling them to take complete control of printing, copying, faxing and scanning activities via the uniFLOW Online portal.
With uniFLOW Online it is easy to allocate print, scan and copy charges to specific projects, departments or cases. Costs can be allocated on a per-job basis or by default according to user, device or location.
Information on each department or agency’s print, copy, fax and scan usage is collated into reports for fast and easy analysis on the uniFLOW Online portal. By producing graphical reports with user details, device details and usage summaries – by individual, department, or agency – it is possible to identify invaluable opportunities to save on waste and costs.
Our government relies on an efficient and robust mobile workforce. Regardless of location, uniFLOW Online allows users to print documents to a device quickly and securely using a smartphone or tablet with more than 40 document and image file types supported. Furthermore, the uniFLOW Online mobile app allows users to submit and release print jobs from their Android or iOS devices.
Guest printing is also enabled by establishing a secure print email address. Once a print job is sent, the user will receive an email with instructions on how to retrieve their job using a secure temporary code.
To boost productivity uniFLOW Online users can scan documents directly from any supported Canon device to a range of local and cloud-based scan destinations such as OneDrive, SharePoint Online, MS Teams and Google Drive. Support for scan workflows, scan templates, and advanced document processing features also enable them to efficiently send and store their documents.
Cloud Image Processing optimises workflows and outcomes by sending scanned documents directly to a variety of scan destinations with enhanced image quality, compression, and document security.
Surrounding government data with the highest level of security is critical to protect our country – we can’t afford to have confidential information exposed to international laws and governance structures that may not uphold the same standards as our own.
uniFLOW Online is currently hosted in eight Microsoft Azure® data centres across the globe, with our closest in Melbourne, Australia. Although outside of New Zealand, the data centre respects data sovereignty and achieves compliance by storing regional customer data within the area it is collected.
This data is then subject to the laws and regulations of that region. With Australian Privacy Law providing comparable safeguards to that of New Zealand’s Privacy Act, this gives businesses comfort knowing that their data is stored, and remains within the Oceania region.
One of the most significant risks for governments worldwide is data security. In fact, 96% of security decision-makers say that Zero Trust – which assumes no user, device, or service within or outside the organisation can be trusted – is imperative to their organisation’s success.²
To maximise protection for government data, uniFLOW Online follows principles defined by Microsoft, to achieve a Zero Trust network environment.
• Verify explicitly
• Use least-privileged access
• Assume breach
It offers a variety of implementation options that enable customers to choose the one that suits their network best, regardless of where they are in their Zero Trust journey.
This approach includes multi-factor authentication/identity access management, device security and tools to remotely monitor, track and report user behaviour and device anomalies such as DDoS attacks. Importantly, the controls applied to government networks are extended to home and remote workers.
Recent global events have created both an appetite and opportunity for cloud services. Government departments and agencies that are planning for a cloud-first future should extend their ambition to their print infrastructure to ensure that remote and office workers have secure, flexible access to cloud print and scan functionality that boosts productivity and protects data. A holistic strategy that encompasses managing print and scanning can increase data security and reduce on-premise server hardware and IT operational costs.
To learn more about Canon print and software solutions for Government organisations, visit our Government Solutions webpage, or talk to a Canon expert today.
¹ https://quocirca.com/content/quocirca-cloud-print-services-2022-market-landscape/
² https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2021/07/28/zero-trust-adoption-report-how-does-your-organization-compare/
If your business isn’t using a cloud-based print management solution, you’re missing out on a range of efficiency, environmental and security benefits.
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