March 2026 Newsletter

Your Home Is Watching and That Is a Cyber Security Issue!

CALL TO ACTION: When Your Security System Becomes a Surveillance Network, Who Is Really Being Protected?

Last month, we explored the human side of AI and why psychological vulnerabilities have become the most critical security surface. This month, that conversation comes home, literally.

If you watched the Superbowl, you may have seen the ad for Ring cameras. Before you dismiss the controversy that followed as a consumer privacy concern, there are downstream implications for cybersecurity governance that you and your Board should consider. Here’s why.

In February 2026, two events collided that forced millions of Americans to reconsider the devices mounted on their front doors. The Super Bowl ad for Ring revealed an AI-powered feature that activates a neighborhood network of cameras to scan footage. Days later, the FBI recovered video from a Google Nest camera that the homeowner believed had been deleted.  The footage extracted was from what the Bureau described as “residual data located in backend systems.”

Together, these stories expose a reality most consumers have not confronted: the security devices we install to protect our homes are simultaneously building one of the largest civilian surveillance networks in history. And the data they collect may never truly be under our control.

“You bought a doorbell. You got a node in a surveillance network. The question isn’t whether your data is being collected. It’s who gets to decide what happens to it.”  Cyber Knowledge Partners 2026

What Happened in February

The Ring Super Bowl Ad: Search Party

Amazon aired a Super Bowl ad showcasing Ring’s “Search Party” feature, an AI tool that mobilizes a network of participating outdoor Ring cameras to scan footage and locate lost dogs. The ad was designed to be heartwarming believing the public would love it. The public reaction was anything but.

Critics immediately recognized that a system designed to scan camera networks for lost pets could just as easily be used to track people. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a “surveillance nightmare.” Senator Ed Markey wrote an open letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy demanding the company “get this creepy technology away from our homes.” Customers posted about destroying their Ring cameras and requesting refunds.

Perhaps most concerning: Search Party is enabled by default on eligible cameras, requiring users to actively opt out. With roughly 20 million Ring devices installed in American homes, the feature created an instant AI-powered scanning network across neighborhoods nationwide, without most homeowners knowing it existed.

Within days, Amazon canceled its planned partnership with Flock Safety, a company operating a nationwide network of automated license plate readers used by police. The integration would have allowed law enforcement to request Ring doorbell footage through Flock’s infrastructure. While Amazon cited resource constraints, the timing told a different story.

The Nancy Guthrie Case: When “Deleted” Doesn’t Mean Gone

The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie from her Tucson, Arizona home generated national attention, both for the human tragedy and for what investigators revealed about smart home data.

Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera had been disconnected. She did not have a paid subscription that would have stored her video. Under Google’s free plan, footage should have been deleted within hours. Law enforcement initially said the video was unrecoverable.

They were wrong. After working with Google engineers for over a week, the FBI recovered footage showing a masked, armed individual at Guthrie’s door. FBI Director Kash Patel described the recovery as extracting “residual data located in backend systems,” footage that existed on Google’s servers long after the user believed it had been deleted.

Cybersecurity experts explained that cloud-based camera systems route video through multiple layers of servers and processing systems. Even when data is marked for deletion, traces can persist across that infrastructure. As one expert noted, companies use “lazy deletion mechanisms” that make data unavailable to users but don’t immediately destroy it.

The implications extend well beyond a single case. If law enforcement can recover “deleted” footage from backend systems, what else persists? And who else might access it?

The Bigger Picture: Your Smart Home’s Data Footprint

Ring and Nest are just the most visible examples of a much larger pattern. Research from Surfshark found that Amazon’s Alexa app collects 28 out of 32 possible data points, more than three times the average smart home device. This includes precise location, contact details, and health-related information, all linked to individual user profiles. Google collects 22 out of 32 data points. One in ten smart home apps collects data specifically for user tracking.

Meanwhile, Amazon has eliminated the option for local voice processing on Echo devices. All Alexa voice recordings are now sent to Amazon’s cloud. The company framed this as necessary for its AI-powered Alexa+ service. But the practical effect is that the “opt out of data collection” option no longer exists for core functionality.

“They very much don't want this to be well known... that they have such a vast ability to surveil people and collect data that often surpasses law enforcement's capabilities." Ashkan Soltani, former Executive Director of the California Privacy Protection Agency,

The FTC has already acted on some of these concerns. In a settlement, Ring agreed to pay $5.8 million after the FTC found that Ring’s lax security allowed employees to spy on customers through their cameras, including cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms. Hackers exploited the same vulnerabilities to harass and proposition children through Ring devices.

Why This Is a Cybersecurity Issue, Not Just a Privacy Debate

For leaders and Boards, the temptation is to categorize this as a consumer privacy concern. It is not. This is a cybersecurity and governance issue with direct implications for organizations.

1.     Discernment is now a security control. Remote and hybrid workers conduct sensitive meetings, handle proprietary information, and discuss strategy in homes equipped with always-listening smart speakers and always-watching cameras that stream to third-party cloud servers. The attack surface for corporate espionage now includes your employees’ front doors.

2.     Data persistence creates unpredictable exposure. The Guthrie case demonstrated that “deleted” data can be recovered from cloud infrastructure. For organizations that rely on data deletion as a compliance strategy, this raises serious questions about what truly constitutes deletion in a cloud-first world.

3.     AI features are expanding the blast radius. Features like Search Party don’t just collect data from one household. They create networked surveillance systems that aggregate footage across entire neighborhoods. A single compromised node provides access to a much broader dataset than any individual camera.

4.     Law enforcement access creates new risk vectors. Ring’s Community Requests feature, which allows police to request footage from nearby cameras during investigations, remains a core product feature even after the Flock cancellation. Reports have documented that similar systems have been used for immigration enforcement and other surveillance purposes beyond their stated intent.

What Boards and Leaders Should Be Asking

•       Do our remote work policies address smart home surveillance risks in employees’ home offices

•       How do our data retention and deletion policies account for cloud infrastructure where “deleted” may not mean destroyed

•       Are we assessing the cumulative privacy exposure from IoT devices across our workforce

•       Do our vendor risk assessments evaluate how third-party platforms share data with law enforcement or government agencies

•       How are we educating employees about the security implications of consumer IoT devices in their homes

•       Are we prepared for the regulatory and reputational consequences if employee or customer data is exposed through a smart home device

Practical Steps for Individuals and Organizations

For Individuals: Review which smart home features are enabled by default, many surveillance capabilities are opt-out, not opt-in. Disable features like Ring’s Search Party and Community Requests if you don’t want your cameras participating in networked scanning. Consider cameras with local storage rather than cloud-only solutions. Regularly review and delete voice recordings stored by smart speakers.

For Organizations: Update remote work security policies to address smart home devices. Include IoT device risk in security awareness training. Evaluate whether sensitive meetings and data handling should have protocols around ambient listening devices. Build “data persistence” assumptions into compliance frameworks—recognizing that cloud deletion is not the same as destruction.

Where Fiction Meets Reality

In Stolen Trust, we explore how surveillance systems marketed as protective tools become mechanisms of control. The Ring and Nest controversies illustrate the same dynamic playing out in real time: technology designed to make us feel safe is quietly building infrastructure that makes us more observable, more trackable, and more vulnerable to influence. When convenience becomes the justification for surveillance, and when “deleted” data can be excavated from backend systems, the line between security and control disappears. As we wrote last month: authenticity can be faked, but awareness cannot be automated. The first step in protecting yourself is understanding what your devices are actually doing.

CALL TO ACTION

If your organization needs help assessing smart home and IoT security risks in the context of remote work, AI governance, or Board-level cybersecurity oversight, reach out. And if you want to see how these themes play out in fiction, Stolen Trust is available now. 2026 is the year to stop assuming your devices are working only for you.

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info@cyberknowledgepartners.com

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