Printer Security: The Office Device Nobody Patches
Firewalls, endpoint protection, staff training on phishing, most small businesses have thought about all of it. The printer sitting in the corner rarely makes the list, and that's exactly the problem.
The scale of the problem
According to industry security research, 67% of organisations experienced at least one print-related security incident in 2024, and the average cost of a print-related data breach has climbed to roughly £1,028,346 (around US$1.3 million), a 38% increase year-over-year. Printers have become a genuinely attractive target precisely because they're treated as background office furniture rather than as computers, which is what they actually are.
Why printers are so exposed
- Firmware sits outside normal patch cycles. IT teams that are diligent about patching laptops and servers routinely forget that printers run their own operating systems and firmware, which need the same attention.
- They store more than you'd expect. Modern multifunction printers can retain scanned documents, fax logs, address books and network configuration in onboard memory.
- They're a foothold, not just a target. Because printers usually sit on the same network segment as everything else, a compromised printer can be used to move laterally into more sensitive systems.
A concrete example: CVE-2025-1268, a vulnerability in certain Canon printer drivers, allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code or disrupt print jobs entirely, a reminder that this isn't a hypothetical risk category.
Practical steps for a small office
- Change the printer's default admin password. This sounds obvious and is skipped constantly.
- Keep firmware updated deliberately, on a schedule you control, rather than either ignoring updates entirely or letting silent automatic updates change your printer's behaviour without warning (see our earlier piece on turning off automatic printer updates for how to manage that balance).
- Put printers on their own network segment or guest VLAN where possible, separate from the machines holding your actual sensitive data.
- Disable unused protocols like FTP or Telnet if your printer's admin panel exposes them and you don't use them.
- Set scanned documents to auto-clear from onboard storage rather than accumulating indefinitely.
None of this requires an enterprise security budget. It just requires treating the printer as the networked computer it actually is.
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