Risk you already know. Ownership you still don’t have.
If printer endpoints are not the top item on your list, that’s understandable. Most CISOs already know they have the risk. Quocirca found 67% of organizations had a print-related security incident in 2024, and 67% again in 2026.
Knowing is not the current blockage. Budget and politics are.
Minute 1: Why should I care?
When we say “printer,” think endpoint class—not only the multifunction printer. It is a network-connected computer that authenticates to enterprise systems, stores sensitive information, holds credentials and certificates, and exposes multiple services.
Compromise is not only a bad print job. The device retains jobs, address books, scan-to-folder and scan-to-email credentials and walk-up USB access. You don’t need a fleet-wide failure. One device is enough.
Most organizations cannot produce an accurate inventory. Department purchases, no IMAC-D, and no machine identity mean InfoSec’s list is not the network’s list. Floor walks, CMDB extracts, print industry SNMP scans, IoT scans and contracts still miss the box that was never on the print agreement. Attackers only need that one.
Zero Trust and certificate-based identity still leave printers as the permanent exception list. The identity program you already funded is incomplete by design.
Minute 2: Are your printers actually protected?
Who is responsible for maintaining the cybersecurity state of every printer after it connects to your network?
Is printer endpoint risk on the register—with an owner, assessed exposure, and an explicit decision to mitigate, transfer, or accept it?
Procurement buys. MPS runs uptime and supplies. IT connects. InfoSec scans. OEMs ship features. No one owns the cybersecurity outcome and decades of cost cutting left no budget line.
That ambiguity creates false comfort: we have MPS, so somebody must be handling it. Managed does not mean protected. A scan finding sent to a MPS vendor or IT operations is how the ticket dies in the silo.
Vulnerability scanning sees a thin slice of network facing CVEs. It misses disk contents, stored credentials, USB, password state and many others. It does not remediate, and it does not confirm the box matches the baseline.
Segmentation reduces who can knock on the door. It does not clear what the device is holding, enroll it as an identity, catch the box that never made the VLAN, or survive a reset.
Firmware alone is a fallacy: an update without configuration control can reopen services and undo last quarter’s harden. Unused OEM features and factory defaults left for support costs do not count. Hardening is point-in-time. The next reset, swap, expired certificate or local change undoes it.
All of that is activity. It is not a program. If nobody is responsible for maintaining the required state—and nobody’s budget pays for it—they are not protected.
Minute 3: What does a governed printer security program look like?
A real program requires operations and governance.
Operations begin with knowing what you have—including devices added outside the print agreement.
Each endpoint then needs a baseline. Credentials, configuration, firmware, and certificates have to be maintained across the whole fleet. Drift must be detected and reversed at cadence. Adds, swaps, resets and moves cannot drop the approved state.
That is only half.
InfoSec decides the required state. What risk will you tolerate, what exceptions will you allow, what will the organization accept—in writing, on the register, with an owner?
You can accept printer risk. You cannot accept it by accident because you never listed the devices and the invoice sits in someone else’s contract.
Governance is not an annual policy or an RFP clause. InfoSec sets posture and exceptions. Operations maintain them. Evidence shows whether reality still matches.
Minutes 4–5: What can you do?
The CISO does not need to become the printer department. Put the standing cost with the residual risk—not with whoever buys the boxes.
Ask where continuous operations is allowed to be paid—not whether IT or MPS should staff a project.
If that cost lives only inside the print / MPS / OEM relationship, it will be value-engineered at the three-to-five-year rebid. A new vendor can drop a control or reset the fleet. MPS is not structured for daily inventory, drift, and remediation SLAs—even on a single-vendor fleet. InfoSec still holds the risk.
If that cost lives with residual risk, print keeps the boxes and uptime. InfoSec and IT fund the control. The program survives OEM and MPS turnover.
Procurement politics will push you toward the first seat. That is why awareness has not closed this. If the print silo will not move this year, fund the control on an InfoSec or IT line now. A future RFP clause is not a running program.
Hold any operator to the same test: evergreen inventory; daily drift and remediation, mixed-fleet coverage; approved passwords/certs/firmware/stored-data state and evidence on the register.
- Who is accountable for the cybersecurity state of every printer the week after it connects—by name?
- Where does that work sit in the budget, and does that line survive an OEM or MPS change?
- Can we list every printer this week—including department purchases—and how long until a new or reset device is back on baseline?
- Which printers are permanent exceptions to NAC or certificate policy, and who accepted that risk?
- What evidence do we have this week that actual state still matches what we agreed to tolerate?
If visibility exists only in snapshots, you cannot know whether risk is still inside tolerance. Remediation has to be an operated process—not a project.
Know the risk. Decide what you will tolerate. Define the posture required to stay inside that tolerance. Put payment with the function that owns the risk, not only with the next print contract. Then require continuous inventory, remediation, and evidence.
Otherwise, the printers may be managed. The printer endpoint risk is not.
Jim LaRoe is CEO of Symphion, Inc. and noted author and speaker on printer and IoT endpoint risk and protection. Symphion is the leader in operationalized cybersecurity for printers and connected IoT through its industry leading vendor-agnostic technologies, concierge service delivery, and proven process. Symphion’s revolutionary Symphion Managed Endpoint Cybersecurity Operations Program for Printers & Connected IoT™ (“The Symphion Program™”) provides a complete program with no operational lift for customers including hourly evergreen inventory, twice-daily drift detection, same-day remediation, certificate continuity and restoration, password and configuration posture management, firmware lifecycle, baseline enforcement, break-glass recovery, PMO support, and reporting—continuous cybersecurity operations across mixed fleets, with no dependence on OEM tooling, MPS structure, or customer staffing.
