Printer Diving

I had an interesting conversation this week. A gentlemen told me that he frequently sees things on printers that are of interest to him. It’s understandable that people often print new diagrams, Org charts, or special project material that others may find interesting. Nothing out of the ordinary there… However, he went further and said that many times he has no idea where the items come from or who they belong to, but if they sit on the printer too long he feels that the documents belong to him.

I found this statement quite humorous at first. Actually, I laughed for a few seconds because I thought he was kidding. As it turns out, he was very serious. I thought about it for a while and realized that this is likely going on all the time in large enterprise environments.  A user could print out a sensitive document to a print station, someone grabs it by accident, and then the document owner shows up to nothing at the printer. Thinking that the printer may have malfunctioned, the document owner may re-print it and think nothing else about it. The other person that grabbed it by accident may eventually decide to return the document to the printer. At that point, the document just sits on the printer to be glanced over by anyone using that printer. Someone could then decide to go “Printer Diving” and pick up the sensitive document without a valid need-to-know.

While this may seem a bit trivial since only authorized employees should have access to print stations, let’s not forget about non-cleared visitors, disgruntled employees, competitors, or simply authorized users without a need to know.  In that regard, printer diving can be compared to dumpster diving.