Google Cloud Print Could Bring Security Issues
Cloud is all the rage and Google is one of the
industry’s leading forces. Google’s newest edition,
Google Cloud Print is getting nerds and non-nerds
alike excited about printing again. Essentially,
Google Cloud Print will allow users to print to any
printer anywhere in the world, even from mobile
phones. Imagine that. Could this be the beginning of
the end of fax machines?
Here’s How It Will Work
A user associates printers to their personal
Google account via the Google Cloud Print service.
If you are familiar with Google docs, each user’s
associated printers are treated similarly to
documents in Google Docs. This means that it will be
easy for you to share printers with friends, family
or colleagues. Gone are the days of printer setup
issues. Also, the capabilities of each printer are
shown to the user, so if you need to print in color,
you can select a printer that does so. Once a user
selects print, a print status update is then sent to
the user.
Sounds like a cool app, right? Well, there still
are some security issues that need to be panned out
first. Google is now testing this app in their lab
and it will be featured in Chrome OS.
Here is what Google had to say about their new
app on their website:
In Google Chrome OS, all applications are web
apps. Therefore, in designing the printing
experience for Google Chrome OS, we want to make
sure printing from web apps is as natural as
printing from traditional native apps is today.
Additionally, with the proliferation of
web-connected mobile devices such as those running
Google Chrome OS and other mobile operating systems,
we don't believe it is feasible to build and
maintain complex print subsystems and print drivers
for each platform. In fact, even the print
subsystems and drivers on existing PC operating
systems leave a lot of room for improvement.
Our goal is to build a printing experience that
enables any app (web, desktop, or mobile) on any
device to print to any printer anywhere in the
world.
Security Issues We Are All Thinking About:
What is going to be their end-to-end security
model to ensure that information is secured? If we
can all print from any printer in the world, what
will stop someone else from taking our precious
printed documents intended for someone else? What if
hackers exploit weaknesses to persistently capture
printer traffic? Also, will Google keep our
printouts forever?
Then there is the waste issue. If you would like to
send someone a document across the world, why print
it out? Why not just send via email and if the user
would like to print out your document, they can do
so. Also, for legacy printers, Internet connectivity
is required for printers to work, PCs with the print
proxy software OS will need to be on full-time.
Also, you have to think about printer quality,
printer functions (duplex functions or print trays,
manual feeding). Many of these options will be lost
when printing from afar.
So the question remains: will Google Cloud Print
be enough for end users? |
