We are currently recommending only HP Laserjet Enterprise Printers for the following reasons:

Consistent Firmware updates to deal with Security Issues
Network Firewall for Public IP Use
Available from the UC Gateway system through CDW-G or Gov Connection.

Why not <brand> printer?

We have found that some of the non-business brand printers are not designed for use within the Campus Network as it is right now.

Office of Information Technology has reported vulnerabilities or issues with Brother, Dell and other low cost printers, mostly due to those printers were designed for Home use or the printer was designed to be replaced within a 2 year period of time. If the home use printer in question does not come with a firewall or other method of restricting access it can be used to launch man-in-the-middle or denial-of-service attacks and cannot be connected to any campus network.

We also do not recommend the HP P-Series or OfficeJet series printers as they are also meant for home use.

What do you mean by Home use?

Home use printers are basically printers that aren't expecting a lot of use.

Often it is:

Printing only a few pages a week (at most 20 pages)
Going to be connected to a computer (Not really shared)
Being on a home network (Not on a Public Network, which is what UCSB is mostly on)
Small office use (Such as a 3 or 4 person at most office use)

Home use printers are also often cheap as the plan is for it to be replaced in a couple of years.

When requesting for a printer

We will need to know some of the particulars you will need:

Personal or Shared Printer
Duplexing (Printing on both sides) needed
Expected work load (pages printed in a month)
Black and White or Color
Networked or not
Other needs (Like Scanning/Copying/FAX)

Due to the fluidity of printer models changing over time, we recommend that you contact help@engineering.ucsb.edu to select a printer.

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