Quocirca's Print Security Landscape 2026 report, published in July and widely covered in the trade press throughout September and October, found that two-thirds of organizations surveyed across the UK, France, Germany, and the United States experienced at least one print-related data loss in the past year. That figure is up from 56 percent in 2025, and 43 percent of respondents reported multiple incidents.
The research drew on responses from 400 IT decision-makers across companies of varying sizes and industries. Despite those numbers, only 31 percent of respondents viewed their print infrastructure as a significant security risk — ranking it seventh behind concerns such as cloud, AI, and email. Quocirca notes that the average cost of a print-related data breach now exceeds £1 million per incident. Organizations with mixed, multi-vendor printer fleets reported a higher breach rate (69 percent) than those running standardized single-vendor fleets (64 percent). The report also highlights that Microsoft's ongoing shift away from third-party print drivers toward internet printing protocol and inbox-driver models is changing how enterprise print environments are managed and secured.
IT directors and facilities managers responsible for printer fleets may want to confirm that all devices are running current firmware, that default administrator credentials have been changed, and that print jobs containing sensitive information are protected by pull-printing or secure release controls. Organizations with mixed fleets or decentralized print environments face a higher statistical exposure and may find this a timely moment to review fleet governance policies.
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