Secure printing is when you send your file to the printer (print job) with a pincode chosen by you. Your print job will not be printed until you put in this pincode at the machine.

Have you ever run to the printer to fetch confidential prints because you did not want anyone else to take them by mistake?
Have you noticed lots of papers next to the printer that have never been collected?
Or maybe you printed something only to realise immediately that it wasn’t correct, meaning you will have to throw those pages away and print again?

Secure print aims to reply to all these points by:

• ensuring confidentiality: no one can walk off with your printout;
• eliminating forgotten printouts: if you do not release your print job within 12 hours, it is automatically deleted (please note this is 4 hours on some smaller models);
• reducing paper waste: as there is a delay between when you send and when you release your print job at the machine, you can delete incorrect jobs before printing them.

In this way, we only print what we really need, resulting in less waste.

In addition, you can set secure print by default for all your printing so it is even easier to use. To find out how, please find instructions and links to short video tutorials for Mac and PC, in both English and French, here. Using secure printing in Linux will be documented in a future announcement.

Please help us spread the word about this function: by mentioning it to your colleagues and asking them to use secure print. Let’s work together to reduce paper waste at CERN – thank you!