Page 68 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2025

Cyber resilience starts here

To plug these gaps, organizations need to prioritize improvements across the printer lifecycle. To start
with, IT, security and procurement teams must collaborate more effectively to define security and
resilience requirements for new printers. Involving ITSDMs earlier in the procurement process also helps
ensure the right questions are asked and vendor claims properly verified.

Next, the ongoing management of print security deserves much greater focus, including managing
firmware admin passwords to securely enable configuration changes and technical support. Control of
changes to physical components, along with regular checks of device security configurations, is also
essential for maintaining printer security. When managing printer fleets, prompt application of firmware
updates and using Security Information and Event Management tools to monitor security logs from the
printer fleet are a must to reduce the attack surface and detect exploitation attempts.

It’s vital IT teams look to buy printers that can be secured across the whole lifecycle. Organizations
require models that can continuously monitor for zero-day threats and malware, and those that support
secure encrypted printing and data loss prevention. Machines with built-in secure erasure of hardware
and firmware data will help to streamline second life and recycling. By ensuring any printer supports multi-
pass overwriting of sensitive print data on the hard disk drive and the secure erase of solid-state drives,
organizations can gain peace of mind that private data can’t be retrieved after decommissioning.

A long-term commitment

Despite the proliferation of digital workflows, printers continue to be an integral part of the modern office.
But as such, they are also an attractive target for threat actors and a potential cybersecurity risk.
Organizations committed to cyber resilience must not overlook their responsibility to mitigate this risk as
comprehensively as possible.

Above all, remember that printer security is a long-term commitment, with refresh cycles spanning years.
It’s time to give printer security the attention it deserves.

About the Author

Steve Inch is Global Senior Print Security Strategist and Product
Management Lead at HP Inc.

Steve can be reached online at LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/inchsteve and at our company website
https://www.hp.com/.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2025 Edition 68
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