The MFP Blind Spot: Why Your Print Fleet Needs to Be Part of Your Security Program

Ran an informal audit across a few Canadian client environments recently, specifically looking at MFP security posture in isolation from the rest of the network. The results were worse than I expected, and I don't think these environments are unusual.

What I found, across multiple organizations:

• Default or unchanged admin passwords on the device's own management interface

• No patch schedule — firmware several versions behind, sometimes years

• No authentication required to release a print job at the device

• Full network access with no segmentation, sitting on the same VLAN as workstations
  

These same organizations have solid MFA, endpoint protection, and email filtering. The MFP just wasn't part of that conversation when the security program was built — because historically, nobody thought of it as a device that needed one.

Why this matters more than it used to:

Modern MFPs are full network devices with their own OS, storage, and often a web-based admin panel. They process HR records, financial documents, and client files all day. An unsecured one is a soft target sitting in plain sight on a network that's otherwise locked down.

The baseline fixes, in rough priority order:

• Change default admin credentials (yes, actually check this)

• Require authentication before a job releases at the device

• Put MFPs on their own VLAN, segmented from workstations and servers

• Get firmware updates onto an actual schedule, not "when the tech happens to visit"

• Enable audit logging if the device supports it
  

None of this requires new hardware — most of it is configuration on what's already deployed. The bigger lift is just putting the MFP fleet inside the existing security review process instead of treating it as out of scope.

Has anyone actually run a pen test that specifically targeted the print fleet? Curious what showed up.