What Organizations Need to Change When Managing Printers

Why It Matters

Unsecured printers expose sensitive data and provide attackers a low‑effort entry point, threatening overall enterprise cybersecurity and compliance.

Key Takeaways

• Printers represent up to 30% of corporate endpoints.
• No clear owner for printer security across organizations.
• Budget lines omit dedicated printer protection spending.
• Managed print services often leave factory defaults unchanged.
• Governance, metrics, and audits required for printer hygiene.

Pulse Analysis

Print devices have silently become a substantial portion of the enterprise attack surface. While laptops and servers receive regular patching and monitoring, printers—often handling confidential documents—remain invisible, storing and transmitting data without proper safeguards. Industry surveys estimate that 20‑30% of an organization’s endpoints are printers, yet they are rarely included in standard endpoint protection programs, creating a gap that threat actors readily exploit.

The root cause lies in leadership oversight rather than technology. Companies typically assign printer upkeep to supply‑chain or facilities teams focused on cost, while IT and security view them as peripheral. This ownership vacuum means no dedicated budget, policy, or KPI exists for printer security, allowing default credentials and open services to persist. By establishing a single Printer Endpoint Security Owner under the CISO and allocating a standing budget, organizations can shift printer protection from ad‑hoc projects to a continuous control.

Embedding security into procurement and risk management closes the loop. Updated RFPs should demand cross‑OEM compliance reporting and enterprise‑grade authentication, while risk registers must list printer assets alongside servers and workstations. Regular metrics—such as policy coverage rate, exception counts, and time‑to‑remediate configuration drift—provide executives with transparent visibility. When printer hygiene is treated with the same rigor as other endpoints, organizations reduce data leakage risk, meet compliance mandates, and strengthen overall cyber resilience.