Secured printing

Methods and apparatus to facilitate secured printing in a network environment. Imaging devices on the network are adapted to look for a security key associated with each print job or incoming data stream. If no security key is identified, an imaging device denies the print request, i.e., it accepts the print job and removes it from the print queue, but generates no tangible output. If a security key is identified, a request is sent to another device on the network containing a database of valid security keys in order to validate the identified key. If the other device validates the key, the imaging device generates the tangible output. Otherwise, it denies the print request.