Beyond the Toner Order: A Quarterly Governance Review for Multifunction Printers
Multifunction printers occupy an odd position in most UK SMEs. They are bought through facilities, leased through a supplier, and serviced when the toner runs out. Yet the average office multifunction device is a networked computer with a hard disk, an operating system, an address book, an email client and a web administration console. It can hold scanned copies of board packs, HR letters, customer contracts and payroll summaries for months. It can also hold credentials for the scan-to-email account and routing rules that few people remember configuring.
That combination — stored documents, live credentials and weak oversight — is a governance problem, not a maintenance issue. This article sets out a practical quarterly review that brings print devices back under the same discipline as the rest of the IT estate.
Why print devices escape the usual controls
Endpoint management usually stops at laptops and servers. Printers are often excluded from asset registers, patching cycles and access reviews because they are treated as office equipment rather than IT systems. The lease may sit with facilities, the supplier may handle break-fix, and the device may never appear in the joiners and leavers process. The result is a network-connected appliance with a local administrator password that has not changed since installation and a scan-to-email account that still uses the credentials of a former employee.
For a UK SME, the risk is not hypothetical. A device that retains scanned documents can become a source of personal data exposure under UK GDPR. A scan-to-email configuration with permissive routing can be used to send documents outside the organisation. An unpatched firmware version can expose the web console to known vulnerabilities. None of these issues require a sophisticated attacker; they require only that nobody checks.
The quarterly review: five evidence points
The review should be short enough to repeat every quarter and specific enough to produce evidence. Five areas are enough for most SMEs.
1. Administrative access
List every print device on the network and confirm who can reach its web console. Default administrator passwords should be changed, unique accounts should be used for named administrators, and shared or generic admin logins should be removed. Where the device supports role-based access, routine users should not have administrator rights. Record the date of the last password change and the name of the person accountable for the device. If the supplier holds the only admin credentials, ask for a documented process that allows the business to regain control when the contract ends.
2. Firmware and configuration
Record the firmware version of each device and check it against the manufacturer's current release. Where automatic updates are supported, enable them and note the maintenance window. Where they are not, add firmware checks to the quarterly review. Configuration drift matters too: confirm that unused protocols and services are disabled, that the web console is not exposed to the internet, and that remote management is limited to trusted networks or VPN access. A printer that is reachable from outside the office is a server with a paper tray.
3. Scan-to-email permissions and routing
Scan-to-email is convenient and poorly governed in equal measure. Review which devices can send email, which accounts they use, and whether those accounts can send to external domains. The scan-to-email account should be a dedicated service account with a strong password and limited permissions, not a named user's mailbox. Check the device address book for stale contacts and confirm that LDAP or directory integration does not expose more information than intended. If the device can write scanned files to a network share, confirm that the share permissions match the sensitivity of the documents being scanned.
4. Retention settings
The device hard disk is the part of the printer that nobody thinks about until it is removed. Set automatic deletion of stored documents after a defined period, and confirm that temporary storage used for copy, print and scan jobs is cleared. For devices that support secure erase, enable it. For those that do not, document the limitation and factor it into the lease-return process. Retention should be deliberate: a device that keeps every scanned document for the life of the lease is a records-management problem waiting to be discovered.
5. Lease return and wipe evidence
When a device leaves the building, the data should leave with it in a controlled way. Ask the supplier for a wipe certificate or a documented sanitisation process before the device is collected. Record the asset identifier, the date of removal, the method used and the name of the person who confirmed it. If the supplier cannot provide evidence, arrange for the storage media to be removed and destroyed, and keep the destruction certificate. This is the same discipline you would apply to a returned laptop, and it should apply to a printer that has held board papers.
Making it a quarterly control
The review should have a named owner — often the IT manager or the managed service provider — and a fixed place in the governance calendar. The output is not a long report. It is a one-page evidence sheet per device or per lease, stored alongside other IT governance records. Exceptions should be logged with a date and an owner, not left as background noise.
The board does not need to see every firmware version. It does need to know that print devices are included in the asset register, that data retention is defined, and that lease returns are evidenced. That is the difference between a facilities chore and a governance control.
As 2026 progresses, the printer will remain the least glamorous device on the network. It will also remain one of the most likely places for a scanned document to outlive its purpose. A quarterly review does not make print devices interesting. It makes them accountable.
