After this week's podcast revelation about the marketing agency losing client files through an unsecured printer, my inbox has been full of variations on the same question: how do intelligent business owners with otherwise solid security miss something this obvious?

The answer isn't comfortable, but it's important: IoT security failures aren't about lack of intelligence. They're about systematic psychological blind spots that affect everyone from small business owners to government departments.

Former UK Government analyst reveals the cognitive biases costing UK businesses millions and, more importantly, how to overcome them before your next security decision. Understanding the psychology prevents the breach.

Right, let's talk about the £15,000 security investment that just got absolutely destroyed by a £300 office printer. A marketing agency did everything right: new firewalls, endpoint protection, hardware authentication keys for every staff member, security audit came back clean. Two months later? Someone had been accessing their client files for weeks through their HP printer still using admin/admin as credentials. While you've been securing laptops and servers, your printer has full network access, stores every document you print, and still uses the password it shipped with. Pull up a chair, this intervention is long overdue.

Your smart home isn't smart: it's a corporate surveillance network that makes the Stasi look like amateurs. While you're asking Alexa about the weather, Amazon's recording everything and building psychological profiles to flog to advertisers.

Your Samsung TV captures 30 screenshots per minute, Google Home logs every conversation, and data brokers are making millions from your family's most intimate moments.

The FBI warns these devices can be hijacked, yet homes everywhere are stuffed with always-listening corporate spies disguised as convenience gadgets. We've voluntarily built our own digital panopticon and called it "smart living." Absolute madness.