Can Office Network printed Documents be read by network admins?

Question

If we print documents in an office network, are they stored somewhere on the servers or can network admins access those documents at some later point in time ?

Solution 1

It largely depends in how the printers are configured. Central print server configured to cache printed documents for x days, and the cache is included in backups? Could be available to admins for a while.

Some office printers cache internally for x or infinite days.

If you are connected directly to a printer by ip and the printer doesn't cache, there will be no practical remnants to indicate you printed a specific document and allow a copy to be retrieved.

Even if the printed document isn't stored internally, most printers keep an ongoing log of print jobs: who printed, what was printed, when it was printed, and how many copies.

If it's on your work computer or in your work email, the super admin in your company can easily access it, if they have a reason to go looking for it.

Solution 2

There is software like SPLVIEWER that lets you view print spool files. Hence, if the admins have access to your spool files, they can view them. This means that, if you print via a server it's possible.

They would need to do it while the files are available. That means they need to either do it while you're printing, or they can set the server to keep the spool files after the job is finished, and view them at their leisure.

If you print direct to the printer (to its IP address) instead of via a server, then the spool files are on your own PC and the admins usually have no access to them. At the very least you can make sure they are deleted. Of course, if your organisation is paranoid enough, your PC may be set up such that admins have access to every file at all times. In that case, the spool files are the least of your worries!

There is still the possibility that the print files are held on the printer, but that is rare. Only printers with an internal Hard Disk Drive can do that - but even then most of them do not. If there is no HDD, then the printer forgets the document as soon as it is printed.

Comments

[Kinnectus]

It depends whether you have a print server that renders the print jobs on behalf of the client; it then prints the work and, yes, may be able to store a history of the job. In most cases, however, print jobs are rendered on the client and you can directly connect to the printer - USB printers etc. This saves most resources and is usually not recoverable unless the printer memory is storing the print data for any reason. They don't normally.

[Kinnectus]

My work place has a number of print servers but we have a system where you choose which printer to print from, swipe your ID card and the printer queries the server for my print jobs.

[STTR]

1. print to file. 2 copy file to printer port.