Print Infrastructure Is the Biggest Zero Trust Gap CIOs Haven’t Closed, Survey Finds

54% of CIOs and IT leaders call the risk in their document and print workflows “known and accepted,” even as only 16% have brought print into their Zero Trust architecture

ST. GEORGE, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vasion today released new research revealing a security gap hiding in plain sight across enterprise IT: CIOs and IT leaders know their print environments carry risk, but print remains largely outside their Zero Trust strategies even as failures continue to disrupt business operations. According to an independent survey of 500+ enterprise CIOs and senior IT leaders commissioned by Vasion through Censuswide, 54% of respondents describe their print environment as “actively managed, with known and accepted risks.” At the same time, 61% report that print or document workflow failures disrupt their business at least once a week.

The finding points to a broader issue: print may not be viewed as broken, but it remains an accepted area of exposure and operational friction. The gap becomes stark when survey respondents assess their own Zero Trust progress. Cloud workloads lead at 66% coverage, followed by endpoint security at 61% and identity management at 58%. Print infrastructure trails every category at just 16%.

That means the infrastructure handling sensitive documents across the enterprise remains dramatically less covered by Zero Trust strategies than the systems surrounding it. Closing that gap becomes more urgent as enterprises move toward AI. A full 64% of CIOs and IT leaders say establishing or expanding AI is a leading 2026 focus.

"CIOs want AI agents doing real work inside their document workflows," said Corey Ercanbrack, CTO at Vasion. "Those workflows still run through print and scan, and in most organizations that layer sits outside Zero Trust with no identity binding and no audit trail. You can't give an agent access to a layer you can't verify. Closing the print gap isn't just security cleanup. It's the prerequisite for end-to-end agentic AI."

Vasion’s Intelligent Print Automation platform is designed to modernize print infrastructure, extend Zero Trust principles to the print environment, and connect print and document workflows to the broader digital enterprise— making every document AI-ready to search, sign, or store.

The full report is available here.

Survey Methodology

Censuswide surveyed 502 U.S. CIOs, IT directors and systems administrators at organizations in the government, manufacturing and healthcare sectors between June 3 and June 9, 2026. Respondents comprised 50% CIOs, 41% IT directors and 9% systems administrators. Censuswide is a member of the Market Research Society and the British Polling Council, is a signatory of the Global Data Quality Pledge, and adheres to the MRS Code of Conduct and ESOMAR principles. The research was commissioned by Vasion, which owns the data and findings.

About Vasion

Vasion is an Intelligent Print Automation category leader making digital transformation attainable for all by eliminating print servers, consolidating print environments, and digitizing document workflows. Renowned for pioneering serverless, direct IP printing with PrinterLogic, we are now redefining modern output management with one of the world's most secure cloud native platforms: Vasion holds ISO 42001 and ISO 27001 certifications, a SOC 2 Type II report, and achieved FedRAMP® High Authorization. More than 14,000 customers globally, including hundreds of the world's leading enterprises, deploy Vasion's software to modernize, consolidate, automate, and secure their print environments, while deploying and enabling agentic AI at the document layer through capabilities like Print Agent and Forms Agent (coming soon) within Vasion Automate. Learn more at vasion.com.

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