Yes. Printers that authenticate to directory services or file shares are part of the identity plane, so they need lifecycle ownership, least privilege, and network segmentation. Without those controls, a single device can expose reusable credentials, directory data, and a path into internal resources.
Why Printers Belong in Identity Governance
Printers are often treated as peripherals, but in many environments they authenticate to Active Directory, file shares, print servers, or cloud management services. That makes them identity-bearing endpoints, not just devices on a network. Once a printer can present credentials or consume access rights, it becomes part of the same governance problem as any other non-human account or managed system.
That changes how ownership is assigned. A printer should have a lifecycle owner, documented provisioning, periodic review, and a clear offboarding path when it is replaced, relocated, or retired. The control objective is not to manage the printer as a human user, but to manage the access path it creates to data, directories, and shared services.
identity governance also matters because printer accounts are often created once and then forgotten. Over time, that can lead to shared credentials, excessive permissions, or stale access that no one can confidently explain. When a device can authenticate, its entitlements deserve the same discipline you would expect for service accounts or other machine identities.
Why Printers Should Be Segmented
Network segmentation limits what a printer can reach if it is misconfigured or compromised. A printer does not need broad east-west access to operate, so segmentation should constrain it to the print infrastructure, directory services it truly needs, and any approved management or update paths. This reduces the blast radius if the device leaks credentials or is abused as a foothold.
This is especially important because printers frequently interact with sensitive internal resources indirectly. A printer that can reach file shares, directory lookups, or administrative consoles may expose cached secrets, metadata, or internal naming information that helps an attacker move laterally. Zero Trust Identity Guide is useful here because it frames segmentation as an identity-centric control, not just a routing decision.
Segmentation also helps separate device classes. Printers should not sit in the same trust zone as user endpoints, servers, or management systems unless there is a specific, documented reason. If a printer must talk to a directory service, that pathway should be narrowly defined and monitored rather than treated as a generic internal allowance.
What Good Governance Looks Like for Printers
Good practice is to inventory printers as governed assets, map each one to an owner, and document exactly what it authenticates to and why. The access model should be minimal, time-bounded where possible, and reviewed when the printer is replaced, reconfigured, or decommissioned. IAM and IGA Basics is a helpful reference for applying lifecycle and entitlement discipline to devices as well as people.
Credential handling should be treated carefully. If the printer relies on reusable credentials, those secrets need rotation, scope limits, and a clear recovery path if the device is reset or migrated. The safer pattern is to reduce standing trust and keep printer access narrowly scoped to the exact services required for print, discovery, and support.
From a program perspective, printers should appear in the same governance conversations as other non-human identities, because they can create the same failure modes: privilege creep, unmanaged access, and hidden dependencies. Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs and Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Key Challenges and Risks both map well to that operational reality.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Printers become risky when they are trusted enough to authenticate but are governed lightly enough that nobody can explain their permissions. In that condition, a compromised or obsolete device can expose reusable credentials, enumerate directory data, or provide a bridge into internal systems that were never intended to be reachable from a peripheral device.
Failure mechanism: Weak lifecycle control, broad network reach, or embedded credentials allow the printer to be used as a persistent identity-bearing foothold, especially when its access is not reviewed alongside other machine identities.
Impact: Attackers can gain lateral movement, harvest sensitive metadata, or abuse the printer’s trust to reach file shares, directory services, or other internal resources with higher privilege than the device should have.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) and CIS Controls v8 set the technical controls, while ISO/IEC 27001:2022 defines the regulatory obligations.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | IA-9 — Service Identification and Authentication | Printers authenticating to services are machine endpoints that need controlled authentication. |
| AC-6 — Least Privilege | Printers should only reach the print and management resources they require. | |
| Recommendation — Apply IA-9 to bound printer authentication to only the services it must use. Limit printer entitlements to the minimum systems and actions needed. | ||
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | Zero Trust Architecture | Printer segmentation is an identity-centric trust-boundary problem. |
| Recommendation — Place printers in narrowly scoped trust zones and verify every access path. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-12 — Network Infrastructure Management | Segmenting printers and constraining their network reach is a core infrastructure safeguard. |
| Recommendation — Isolate printer networks and restrict reachability to approved services only. | ||
| ISO/IEC 27001:2022 | A.5.15 — Access control | Printers with authenticated access need formal access rules and review. |
| Recommendation — Define and enforce access rules for printer accounts and services. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to verify: Confirm whether each printer has an owner, an inventory record, and a documented list of systems it authenticates to. If you cannot name the dependent services, the printer is already under-governed.
Decision rule: If a printer authenticates anywhere beyond its print workflow, treat it as a governed identity-bearing asset and apply segmentation, least privilege, and periodic access review. If it cannot authenticate at all, network isolation still matters, but identity governance becomes lighter.
What good looks like: The printer can reach only the minimum services it needs, its credential exposure is bounded, and retirement removes both the device and its access paths. That is the operational test that the control is working.
Practitioner takeaway: Printers are not exempt because they are “just devices”; once they hold credentials or trust relationships, they need the same lifecycle and blast-radius discipline as any other machine identity.