Printer Lockdown Question

[wannabie2]

Is there anyway to lockdown my printer? there are two ways to get to print to my printer; through the network and ip address.
example. when people login through my domain they can get to my printer from the server. but I am finding out people are getting to the printer another way.
all they have to do is type \\ipaddress or printername and they can see the printer. the drivers are loaded to their portable computers from windows update instead of the server.

Is there anyway to prevent them from getting to my printers from \\ipaddress or printername? if so would someone let me know.

 

[goombawaho]

SmartAzz answers which are nonetheless practical
1. Unshare the printer
2. Turn printer off
3. Tell HR to tell people not to use it because you don't want to share

From this article:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/hide-shared-network-resources-in-windows/5034916

"Hiding a resource you want to share is easy. You simply append a dollar sign ($) to the resource’s share name. When you do, the shared resource won’t appear on the network. Furthermore, any access restrictions or passwords assigned to that shared resource remain in effect.

 

[wannabie2]

This is good but my printer does not have password protection. according to the article they will be able to access the printer using the UNC format for network resources.

 

[cmeagan656]

Are you on a domain? If so, create a user group for the printer and put only the employees that have permission to use the printer in the group. We did this for 20 users over 2 multifunction printers to restrict which output trays they printed to.

Hope this helps.

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[goombawaho]

That's not the way I read that article.

"To share the printer, select the Shared As option and then, in the Share Name text box, enter a share name that ends with $. You can also assign a password to the printer in the Password text box. At this point, your printer’s Sharing tab should look similar to the one shown in Figure E.

 

[wannabie2]

I am on a domain. people can still bypass the domain and get to the printer from the IP address.

I will re-read the article you linked.

 

[strongm]

Sadly, it generally depends on the printer, as you need to configure the printer to only accept connections from specific addresses (specifically your print server(s)). Unfortunately many - particularly cheaper - printers don't maintain such access control lists.