This Week in Imaging: U.S. Security Breach Makes the Case for Pull Printing

by Kathleen Wirth · August 22, 2025

Image created with ChatGPT

Last week, Presidents Trump and Putin met in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, and a significant security breach occurred involving an office printer: tourists found U.S. State Department documents lying unclaimed in the output tray of a shared hotel printer.

The documents included the two presidents’ schedules, and seating charts, as well as menus, and had markings indicating that they were printed by the State Department.

That mistake could have been avoided if pull-printing had been enabled. With pull-printing, documents are only printed when the user is physically at the printer and enters their credentials. Virtually every printer maker now offers this capability.

On the other hand, it should be noted that printing to hotel printers can be a risky business altogether, since hackers could possibly intercept data going to the printer if the printer’s not secured.

In this case, the information didn’t seem extremely sensitive, although it did contain information regarding the location of the two leaders.

Overall, the lesson is that if you’re going to print to a printer in a hotel, make sure that you at least you use pull-printing – and refrain from printing highly sensitive information, you never know who could be watching.

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