Aurelio Maruggi, Division President, HP Office Print Solutions, says rising AI threats, expanding attack surfaces, and quantum risks will force organizations in 2026 to secure print ecosystems, adopt quantum‑resilient hardware, and unify identity and data controls.
Advances in AI and automation will continue to reshape how organizations operate in 2026, helping employees work smarter and faster and unlocking new levels of efficiency. But without the right security, new technology can expand the attack surface and expose organizations to potential new risks – making it harder to keep employees productive and protected.
While security strategies are usually updated to address emerging threats, the printing ecosystem is still a persistent point of exposure. Embedded in everyday workflows, networked printers function as edge devices. If compromised, they can provide attackers with a direct route into enterprise networks, enabling sensitive data theft, lateral movement, or attacks that knock critical devices out of service. Print security risks will only worsen in 2026, as AI-powered threats intensify cybercrime, assisting attackers with complex tasks like vulnerability discovery.
As printers increasingly appear on attackers’ radar, organizations will need a more holistic view of cyber resilience that extends to the print ecosystem. Here are three print security trends to watch out for in 2026:
1. Organizations will Need to Take Notice of Print, IoT, and Edge Security After a String of Attacks
Despite a year of high-profile attacks against connected devices in 2025, where security vulnerabilities allowed for remote takeovers of printers, many organizations lack basic visibility and control over print infrastructure.
This creates security blind spots – from exploitation attempts to insider threats, outdated firmware, malicious updates and misconfigurations, such as open ports or unchanged default credentials. After all, printers are most often used by cybercriminals as a launchpad to capture ever-escalating permissions. This enables threat actors to access the broader network of data and devices.
90% of cyberattacks and 70% of data breaches originate at the endpoint. So, in the year ahead, organizations and governments should demand that endpoint devices, like printers, come with continuous and active system monitoring throughout their lifecycle. Future-proofing security will mean securing the complete device ecosystem, including printers. Having the ability to automate print fleet security compliance and assessment of fleet firmware vulnerability status will minimize IT overhead for security conscious enterprises in 2026.
2. Quantum Resilience will Increasingly Influence Printer Decisions
A year on from the introduction of new NIST standards for quantum-resistant asymmetric cryptography, public sector and critical infrastructure companies are going to accelerate planning and vendor engagements to chart a path towards migration. This process will reveal the scale of the challenge. With NIST intending to deprecate RSA-2048 by 2030 and all RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography by 2035, many vendors are likely to seize the opportunity to move directly from RSA-2048 to quantum resistant algorithms – particularly in critical industries and long-life systems, such as hardware.
With ongoing advances in quantum computing, the prospect of a quantum computer capable of breaking asymmetric cryptography within a decade is becoming increasingly plausible. The US government’s decision to set a quantum-resistance deadline of 2027 for new National Security System devices signals this urgency. Adding to the pressure, the threat from ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ attacks mean data must be protected today against future breaches.
To become quantum resilient, organizations must start by preparing their long-lived hardware, including their printers. With an office-class commercial printer lifespan of several years, devices procured in 2026 have the potential to be in use within the timeframe of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer.
As a result, from 2026 onwards, quantum resilience will increasingly influence hardware procurement decisions. This will increase pressure on device manufacturers to future-proof their devices by embedding quantum resistant cryptography into their products, while pushing for the protection of long-life data. By embedding quantum resilience now, organizations can maintain trust in the technologies shaping the Future of Work.
3. Organizations Will Shift to Unified Identity, Provenance, and Persistent Control
We’ll also see efforts within enterprise security shift from fragmented identity frameworks and perimeter-based controls to a unified, data-centric model. Today’s zero-trust implementations often create complexity and fatigue, with identity scattered across users, apps, and devices. This fragmentation leads to blind spots, inconsistent enforcement, and poor user experience. The next phase will prioritise consolidation: centralised identity orchestration that simplifies access, strengthens governance, and reduces operational risk.
At the same time, we’ll see security move from focusing on point of entry, to managing the custody of data throughout its lifecycle. Organizations will need visibility into where data originates, how it is used, and who has access – even after it leaves their boundaries. Identity and policy will travel with the data, embedded through persistent controls, telemetry, and rich metadata. Dynamic permissions such as ‘can I share this?’ will evolve into continuous oversight, ensuring compliance online and offline.
Provenance and lifecycle control will also become critical in the age of AI, where transparency and trust are non-negotiable. By embedding identity, custody, and governance controls into the core of digital ecosystems, organizations will achieve stronger, adaptive security that protects without adding friction.
Future-proof your print security in 2026 to secure the Future of Work
As the threats to print ecosystems escalate, quantum advances loom, and identity management fatigue sets in, reassessing printer security posture in 2026 will be essential to protecting the Future of Work. Embedding security within printers remains one of the most effective defences for the year ahead.
These robust print security strategies must combine automated recovery, isolation technologies and quantum-resistant BIOS security to guarantee uptime, form a fortified barrier against intrusion and counter next-generation attacks. Finally, in an increasingly distributed environment, enterprises will need secure visibility and control over their fleet of printers and at scale.