The Vital Role Output Plays in Military Mission Achievement

In working with our clients and customers across the DoD, I’ve learned they have a very broad array of technology and cyber security concerns, all aimed at supporting their core mission - to deter enemy attacks and employ forces that guarantee the security of our nation and our allies. As these teams focus on those core defense technologies and supporting end-point solutions, I humbly encourage and remind them, “Don’t forget about printed output.”

I’ve witnessed this persistent fact: Print remains a necessity to ensure mission continuity. That’s because the printed page is still often a requirement to conduct mission-critical processes. Mission objectives demand nothing less than providing the most accurate and timely information for their immediate command, other national leadership and combatant commanders, up through and including the Secretary of Defense.

Even as organizations have gone more paperless and print volumes have incrementally decreased, the printing and scanning that remains – that is, moving information from the digital network to analog form and back again, remains a core component of many processes and a necessary form of communication between organizations and external entities. 

In fact, printing and scanning are even more mission-critical than ever before and can have a much higher negative impact if they fail. Over time, output management has become even more complicated, involving network integrations and driving even more costs with operating and managing infrastructure. I can impact the risks of process downtime and related end-user impacts, and very real concerns around security.

Across the DoD, network security is of the utmost concern; every device must be DISA-STIG compliant, with Common Criteria Certificates certified by the NSA’s National Information Assurance Partnership. As a result these days, Common Criteria certification is a fundamental requirement for most any DoD technology procurement. Further, all printing and scanning solutions must have an active DoD Certificate of Networthiness or Authorization to Network to ensure network security is never compromised. And with these and other standards in play, managing the print fleet, with secure performance on the network has never been more important.

Not surprisingly, most organizations still don't want to think about printing and would rather focus on initiatives considered more strategic. These included Hybrid and DoD proprietary cloud solutions; digital transformation, or more commonly across DoD, digital modernization; cost avoidance, to spread IT budgets further; EITaaS, security; the user experience; and given the COVID-19 situation, mission continuity planning.

I’ve found strategic initiatives that organizations are focused on to achieve their mission are incomplete if the roles that printing and scanning play in them are not considered. So, my goal as sales leader is to cut through the noise and identify how we can work together with our DoD clients to support the necessity of print and to fill the holes in their strategic initiatives that connect with printing and scanning.  

So, I ask my customers, with all the advancements in your IT infrastructure, where have you found in your command, printing and scanning still plays an important role? Can you share some examples of the negative impacts that may occur if printing or scanning fails? It’s not only important to their near-term objectives, but also plays a vital to support their Mission and, in turn to our nation’s security.