Print Network Security: How to Safeguard Your Business From Printer-Based Attacks (Updated 2026)
July 31, 2026
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Managed IT & Print Security
Print Network Security: How to Safeguard Your Business From Printer-Based Attacks (Updated 2026)
A plain-English look at printer vulnerabilities, real 2025 exploits, and the print security controls Central Florida businesses can put in place this quarter.
Quick Answer: Print network security is the practice of treating every printer and multifunction device as a networked computer worth protecting. The fastest wins are encrypting print traffic, patching firmware on a schedule, changing default passwords, adding secure print release, and segmenting printers onto their own network. Skip these and one overlooked copier can hand an attacker a door into your whole system.
Why Print Network Security Keeps Getting Ignored
Most offices guard their laptops, servers, and email like crown jewels. The printer in the corner? It hums along, forgotten. And attackers know it.
Here is the uncomfortable part. Your printer is a computer. It has a processor, storage, an operating system, and a live connection to your network. A modern multifunction printer scans, emails, faxes, and stores documents on an internal drive. So a weak printer is not a small gap. It is a full endpoint sitting wide open.
The data backs this up. According to the Quocirca Print Security Landscape 2026 report, published on July 28, 2026, 67% of organizations across the US and Europe suffered at least one print-related data loss in the past year. A year earlier the figure was 56%. Incidents are climbing, not falling.
Yet attention has not caught up. Industry research shows only about 22% of North American IT professionals rate printers as a serious security risk, even though printers now feature in more than half of reported IT breach incidents. That gap between real risk and perceived risk is the whole problem in one sentence.
Smart Technologies has helped Central Florida businesses close this gap since 1999, and the pattern rarely changes: the printer is the last device anyone thinks about, and the first one an attacker probes.
How One Printer Becomes an Open Door
Picture a threat actor scanning your network from the outside. They are not always hunting for your firewall. Often they look for the soft target. An unpatched printer with a default password answers that call.
What can go wrong once a printer is compromised? Quite a lot.
- A launch pad for deeper attacks. An exposed printer can be the entry point for lateral movement into servers, file shares, and workstations.
- Document theft in transit. Print jobs travel across the network. Without encryption, that payroll run or patient record can be intercepted mid-flight.
- Data sitting on the hard drive. Many devices store scanned and printed files internally. Pull the drive, or hack into it, and old documents come right back to life.
- Botnet conscription. A hijacked printer can be folded into a botnet to send spam, spread malware, and join denial-of-service attacks. Your device, someone else’s crime.
- Physical exposure. Sensitive pages pile up in the output tray, unclaimed, in plain sight of anyone walking by.
Want to see how these entry points chain together into a full incident? Our breakdown of the anatomy of a cyberattack walks through the stages step by step.
The 2025 Printer Exploit Nobody Should Ignore
This is not theory. In mid-2025 security researchers disclosed eight vulnerabilities affecting 748 printer, scanner, and label-maker models across five manufacturers, with 689 of those models made by Brother. The headline flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-51978, carried a severity score of 9.8 out of 10.
Here is why it stung. The bug let an unauthenticated attacker generate a device’s default administrator password straight from its serial number, and the serial number could be pulled remotely through ordinary printer services. Worse, Brother confirmed the root cause could not be fully fixed in firmware because it lived in the manufacturing process itself. Devices already built stay exposed unless someone changes the password by hand.
Attackers noticed fast. The first exploit attempts landed on July 4, 2025, then ramped up through the rest of that month as botnets pulled the flaw into their toolkits.
Brother printer models exposed by a single 2025 flaw with no full firmware fix available
The lesson is simple. Firmware patching and password hygiene are not busywork. They are the difference between a routine Tuesday and a breach notification. And no brand is immune, so the same discipline applies whether you run Ricoh, HP, Canon, Brother, or a mixed fleet.
8 Ways to Safeguard Your Print Network
Good print security is layered. No single control does the job, but stacked together these eight steps shrink your attack surface dramatically. Here is the playbook we use with clients.
1. Encrypt print traffic end to end
Every print job is data in motion, and unencrypted data can be read. Turn on end-to-end encryption across the fleet. Whether jobs travel over SMB on Windows or IPPS on Mac, have your IT team verify the settings and disable older, unencrypted protocols like LPR/LPD. One quiet legacy protocol can undo the rest.
2. Patch firmware on a real schedule
A printer needs updates like any server does. Build a firmware and patch calendar, assign an owner, and stick to it. The Brother episode proved how quickly an unpatched fleet becomes a target. So treat printer firmware with the same seriousness you give your operating systems.
3. Change default passwords everywhere
Default credentials are the low-hanging fruit of every breach report. Change the admin password on every device the day it arrives, use strong unique values, and store them in a password manager. This one habit would have blunted the 2025 exploit for most victims.
4. Add multi-factor authentication to your print portal
Your print management dashboard controls the whole fleet, so protect it accordingly. Multi-factor authentication asks for a second proof of identity beyond a password. The payoff is huge. According to CISA, accounts with MFA enabled are up to 99% less likely to be compromised. Most print management platforms support it out of the box.
5. Turn on secure print release (pull printing)
Ever seen a stack of forgotten pages in the tray? Secure print release fixes that. Jobs hold in a queue until the owner authenticates at the device with a badge, PIN, or app. Nothing prints into the open. And you cut paper waste as a bonus.
6. Segment printers onto their own network
Printers rarely need to talk to your accounting server, so do not let them. Network segmentation puts print devices on an isolated slice of the network with firewall rules limiting what they can reach. If a printer is compromised, the blast radius stays small. Our overview of managed network security solutions digs into segmentation in more detail.
7. Encrypt and wipe the internal drive
Enable hard-drive and spool-file encryption so stored jobs stay unreadable. Then set a data-overwrite routine so files clear automatically. And when a device is relocated, returned off lease, or retired, wipe the drive first. Old copiers have leaked tax records and medical files for exactly this reason.
8. Track jobs with watermarking and audit logs
Watermarking stamps jobs with user, date, time, and device data. It will not stop an attack on its own, but it speeds up the cleanup and shows you which device is misconfigured. Pair it with audit logging and you gain a paper trail for compliance too.
Feeling behind on all eight? That is normal. A quick network security audit is the usual starting point, because you cannot protect devices you have not inventoried.
What a Print Breach Actually Costs
Skipping print security feels free until the day it is not. The numbers tell a sobering story.
Quocirca pegs the average print-related breach at roughly 1.35 million US dollars in its 2026 report, up sharply from the prior year. Zoom out to breaches overall and the picture worsens: the IBM 2025 Cost of a Data Breach study put the average US breach at an all-time high of 10.22 million dollars. The US has led the world in breach costs for fifteen straight years.
Average cost of a US data breach in 2025, an all-time high (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report)
Small businesses are not spared. Verizon’s research shows 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses, and industry estimates put the all-in cost of a small-business breach between roughly 120,000 and 254,000 dollars once downtime, recovery, and reputation damage are counted. For a Daytona Beach shop or an Orlando clinic, a number like that can be existential.
So the math is straightforward. Print security controls cost a fraction of a single incident. You are buying insurance against a bill you cannot afford.
Unmanaged vs. Managed Print Security
What actually changes when print security moves from an afterthought to a managed program? Here is an honest comparison.
| Security Factor | Unmanaged Print Fleet | Managed Print Security |
|---|---|---|
| Firmware patching | Ad hoc, often skipped | Scheduled and tracked |
| Default passwords | Frequently left in place | Changed and rotated |
| Print job encryption | Rarely verified | Enabled and tested |
| Device inventory | Incomplete or unknown | Full, current visibility |
| Secure release | Pages sit in the tray | Badge or PIN release |
| End-of-life wiping | Drives leave with data | Certified data wipe |
| Response time | Reactive, after damage | Proactive monitoring |
To be fair, a small office with one printer and a strong internal IT person can manage much of this alone. The trouble starts as fleets grow and staff get stretched. That is where a managed program earns its keep.
What Print Security Typically Costs
Pricing varies by fleet size, brand, and how much is bundled into a managed print or managed IT contract. Still, ballpark ranges help with planning. Treat these as directional, and confirm current pricing with a provider.
| Service | Typical Range | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Secure print release software | $3 to $8 per user / month | Pull printing, badge or PIN release |
| Managed print services | $25 to $150 per device / month | Monitoring, firmware, supplies, support |
| Print security assessment | $500 to $2,500 one time | Fleet audit and remediation plan |
| Managed IT with print security | $100 to $200 per user / month | Full stack: network, endpoints, printers |
These figures are estimates drawn from common market ranges, not quotes, so your actual pricing will differ. The point is proportion. Even the higher end sits far below the cost of one breach.
How Smart Technologies Helps
Smart Technologies is a Business Transformation Agency based in Daytona Beach, and print security sits inside our broader managed IT and managed print practice. Here is where we plug in.
Fleet Audit
We inventory every device, flag unpatched firmware, and find the default passwords still in place.
Monitoring
Proactive monitoring watches your print fleet so issues surface before they become incidents.
Access Control
We roll out secure release, MFA, and badge authentication across your devices.
Network Segmentation
Printers get isolated onto their own segment with tight firewall rules to limit any breach.
Secure Decommission
Retiring a device? We wipe drives with certified data destruction before anything leaves.
Local Support
A Central Florida team you can reach, on site across Daytona Beach and Orlando.
Print security also connects to the rest of your stack, so many clients pair it with our cybersecurity services for Daytona Beach businesses and our managed document services.
Print Security for Central Florida Businesses
Why does location matter for a network issue? Because the threat landscape is not evenly spread. Florida ranks among the top three states for cybercrime complaints reported to the FBI, and small businesses carry the brunt.
Across Daytona Beach, Orlando, and the wider Central Florida corridor, we see the same industries hit hardest: medical and dental offices, law firms, property managers, and local government contractors. Each of those handles regulated data, and each runs multifunction printers that scan and store it.
Ransomware makes it worse. Verizon’s 2025 findings tie ransomware to the large majority of small-business breaches, and Florida’s mix of seasonal staffing and lean IT teams gives attackers room to work. A printer left on defaults is a gift in that environment.
The upside is that local, responsive support closes the gap fast. Smart Technologies keeps a team on the ground in Central Florida, so a print security fix does not wait on a call center three time zones away. For a deeper regional view, our guide to cybersecurity solutions for small business covers the broader picture.
Print Security When Work Happens Everywhere
The office is not the only place documents get printed anymore. Staff print at home, on the road, and from personal devices. And each of those spots widens the attack surface your print security plan has to cover.
Quocirca found roughly 56% of print-related data losses now trace back to home printers and remote work scenarios. That is a big shift. A home printer rarely gets firmware updates, sits on a shared consumer router, and often keeps its factory password for life. So the weakest link in your fleet might be a device you have never seen.
What helps here? A few practical moves. Route remote print jobs through a secure cloud print service rather than a raw open connection. Extend your print management policy to cover home devices, even loosely. And fold printer habits into staff security training, because people protect what they understand. Our look at cloud-based printing benefits covers the secure-connection side in more depth.
Hybrid work is not going away, so print security has to travel with it. The good news is the same core controls still apply. You simply stretch them past the four office walls.
Common Print Security Mistakes
Over 25 years serving Central Florida businesses, we see the same avoidable errors again and again. Recognize any of these?
- Treating printers as furniture. They are networked computers, so leaving them off the security inventory is the root mistake behind most of the others.
- Buying on price alone. The cheapest device with no security features can cost far more after a breach. Balance the sticker against the risk.
- Forgetting the old machine. A retired copier wheeled into a closet still holds a drive full of scanned files. Wipe it, or it becomes a slow leak.
- Skipping staff training. A perfectly patched fleet still fails if someone leaves confidential pages in the tray all afternoon.
- Ignoring the audit trail. Without logging, you cannot tell whether a device has been probed until the damage is already done.
None of these are hard to fix. But they are easy to miss when the printer is the last thing on a busy IT team’s list. A regular vulnerability risk assessment catches most of them before they turn into headlines.
Print Network Security FAQ
Is print network security really necessary for a small business?
Yes. Attackers do not skip small offices; they prefer them. Verizon data shows 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses, and a single printer left on default settings can open the door. The controls are affordable, so the barrier is awareness, not budget.
What is the single most important print security step?
Changing default passwords, closely followed by firmware patching. The 2025 Brother exploit worked precisely because so many devices still ran their factory admin password. It is the cheapest fix with the biggest payoff.
Can a printer really be used to hack my whole network?
It can. A compromised printer opens a path for lateral movement into servers and workstations. It can also be pulled into a botnet or used to intercept the documents flowing through it. Treat it as a full endpoint, because it is one.
How often should printer firmware be updated?
Check for updates monthly and apply critical security patches as soon as the manufacturer releases them. Many managed print programs handle this automatically, which removes the risk of a busy week pushing patches aside.
What is secure print release or pull printing?
It holds each print job in a queue until the owner authenticates at the device with a badge, PIN, or app. No documents sit unclaimed in the tray. And it trims paper waste at the same time.
Do older copiers store copies of what we print and scan?
Many do. Multifunction devices often keep images on an internal drive. Without encryption and a wipe routine, those files can be recovered later, which is why end-of-life data destruction matters so much.
Does network segmentation slow down printing?
No, not in any way users notice. Segmentation simply limits which systems a printer can reach. Jobs print normally while the security benefit runs quietly in the background.
Is multi-factor authentication worth it for print management?
Very much so. CISA reports accounts with MFA are up to 99% less likely to be compromised. Since the print portal controls your whole fleet, protecting it with a second factor is an easy call.
How much does managed print security cost?
It depends on fleet size and scope. As a rough guide, managed print services often run from about 25 to 150 dollars per device each month, and these figures are directional rather than quotes. Any real number should come from a provider assessment.
What should happen to a printer at the end of its lease?
Wipe the internal drive with certified data destruction before it leaves your building. A shocking number of off-lease copiers have surfaced later with sensitive files still readable. So make drive wiping a firm part of decommissioning.
We use a mix of printer brands. Does that change anything?
It adds complexity, and Quocirca data suggests multi-vendor fleets tend to see higher breach costs. The same core controls still apply across brands: patch, encrypt, authenticate, segment. A managed program simply keeps the mixed fleet consistent.
How do I know where my print security stands right now?
Start with an audit. A print security assessment inventories every device, checks firmware and passwords, and hands you a prioritized fix list. Smart Technologies offers this as a first step for Central Florida businesses.
Get Your Print Network Locked Down
Not sure whether your printers are a doorway or a dead end for attackers? Let our Daytona Beach team run the numbers and secure your fleet.
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Call (386) 252-2292
Business Transformation Agency
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