Secure Printing to the Department Copier

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The CS Department copier (one of the department's Available Printers) supports a feature it calls "secure printing". This means that when you print a document to the copier you can attach a PIN to the print job. The copier will hold on to the job until you enter your PIN on its keypad, at which point it will print it out. This can ensure that no one but you will see your printout.

At this time, secure printing is only supported when using Canon's official drivers. The CS Linux Clients do not currently have the official driver installed, for various technical reasons, so they do not support secure printing.

How to Install the Canon Driver

The Canon driver must be installed and appropriately configured before the secure printing option will be available.

For Windows and OSX

The copier is a Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C7270. Make sure you use a driver for that exact model. Drivers for other printer models may have secure printing options, but if you use a different driver the copier will not recognize the request and will print your job without waiting for a PIN.

Go to Canon's website and find the drivers page for the Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C7270. As of March 2015, this link is the correct page, but companies periodically rearrange their websites, so we can't guarantee that link will remain correct.

Open the "Drivers" section and download a driver for the copier. If you're not sure which one to pick, we suggest the PCL6 driver; it's worked reasonably well for us.

Install the driver.

For Linux

The Linux drivers for Canon products are managed by a third-party company named Codehost, with software named BrightQ. Click here to download the BrightQ installer. (You can also get the software from http://canon.codehost.com/, but they require a lot of registration information to get the installer. We've already provided that information on behalf of the CS Department.)

Run the installer with /bin/sh: 

/bin/sh downloaded-file-name.run

How to Configure the Canon Driver

The driver installation will allow you to set up a printer. Use the hostname copier.cs.jhu.edu for the copier. The driver should automatically identify it as an imageRUNNER ADVANCE C7270.

In the printer properties, which you might need to access after the printer has been set up, find the setting that refers to secure printing and enable it. On Windows, the setting is "Secured Print" and it's on the "Device Settings" tab. On Linux, the setting is "Secure Printing Function of Device" and it's on the "Properties" tab in the BrightQ printer configuration program.

How to Use Secure Print

These instructions should work in OSX, though they have not yet been tested there.

Go to print your document in a way that allows you to select the printer. Select the copier and open the printer preferences dialog box.

On the "Basic Settings" tab, find the drop-down menu labeled "Output Method". CHange its value to "Secured Print". You will be prompted to enter your default name and PIN. If you've never used secure print on this computer before, you should click "Yes". to enter the information. (You will be reprompted for this information every time you print; what you're setting here are just the default values.) Once you're back at the printing preferences window, click "OK".

Click the "Print" button. A dialog box will come up and allow you to change your PIN if you want. Simply press "OK" if you want to use your default PIN.

When yo go to the copier, from its main menu, press the "Secure Print" item. Select your print job from the list and then enter your PIN.