Specifying Printer Banners

The PRINTER BANNERS section in the label_encodings file contains the first line or lines that can appear in the handling instructions in the lower third of the banner and trailer pages.

At commercial sites, the Security Administrator role can associate any text in the PRINTER BANNERS section with any compartment bit. The compartment bit must also be assigned to a word in the SENSITIVITY LABELS section of the label_encodings file. In the following example, the printer banner is the line that reads COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL: NEED_TO_KNOW HR.

Compartments from the print job's label are printed in the “Protect As” field along with the print job's “Protect As” classification. In the following example, the compartment HR from the label is printed as an access-related word along with the “Protect As” classification because all compartments are treated as access-related.

Figure 4-5 Commercial Use of PRINTER BANNERS Section on Banner Page

By convention in U.S. government installations, the printer banners line displays any warnings that are associated with the subcompartments of the job's sensitivity label. The following example shows a typical PRINTER BANNERS section at a U.S. government installation. Any string could be specified instead of the string that is shown here: (FULL SA NAME).

Figure 4-6 U.S. Government Use of PRINTER BANNERS Section on Banner Page

Following are the encodings for the printer banner line (FULL SA NAME) in Figure 4-6”

PRINTER BANNERS:

WORDS:
. . .
name= (FULL SA NAME);                      compartments= 2;

Next are the SENSITIVITY LABELS definitions for the same compartments that are used in the PRINTER BANNERS definitions in Figure 4-6. Note that compartment bit 2 is associated with the subcompartment word SA:

SENSITIVITY LABELS:

WORDS:
  .
  .
  .
name= SB;                       minclass= TS; compartments= 3-5;
name= SA; minclass= TS; compartments= 2;

The printer banner displays as (FULL SA NAME) for the following reasons:

• The label contains the subcompartment word SA.

• Compartment bit 2 is associated with the subcompartment word SA.

• Compartment bit 2 is associated with the string (FULL SA NAME) in the PRINTER BANNERS encodings.

For a sample PRINTER BANNERS planner, see Planning the Printer Banners in a Worksheet.