Are Flexible Working Patterns Compromising Your Company’s Cybersecurity?

Are Flexible Working Patterns Compromising Your Company's Cybersecurity?

Your employee opens their laptop at a coffee shop. They connect to public WiFi, check their email, and access your company's cloud storage—all while sipping their morning latte. Convenient? Absolutely. Secure? Not even close.

While you've been celebrating the productivity gains of your flexible work policy, hackers have been celebrating, too—because you just handed them the keys to your digital kingdom.

Most business owners obsess over revenue growth, market share, and team culture. But they're missing the silent killer that could bring it all crashing down overnight: lax cybersecurity in a remote work environment.

In 2024 alone, the average data breach cost companies $4.88 million. And guess what? Over 60% of those breaches were traced back to remote work vulnerabilities.

The brutal truth? The freedom you're giving your team might be the very thing that destroys everything you've built.

The growth of shadow IT

The most significant cybersecurity concerns can often arise through perfectly innocent activities.

An excellent example of this comes in the form of shadow IT. Shadow IT has an intimidating-sounding name, but it is familiar to many of us. It can be defined simply as any software or application used without the IT department's permission. 

Such a practice might sound harmless, but problems can arise if a staff member uses an outdated application or has known vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit. Had the IT team vetted the app, these issues would have been noted, and they could have either updated the app or found a replacement.

But if the IT team doesn't know about the app, they can't do anything to defend the business against it. 

Unfortunately, shadow IT is more likely when working at home than in the office, where the IT team is more likely to oversee what is being used.

Importance of Regular Software Updates

Regular software updates are fundamental to maintaining cybersecurity in any work environment. These updates patch vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit.

In a 2025 survey by the Ponemon Institute, 57% of companies cited outdated software as a significant cybersecurity risk. Ensuring that all devices used for work are kept current narrows the opportunities for attacks and enhances overall security.

More relaxed at home

“With remote working the new norm, it's easy to slip into bad habits,” says Juliette Hudson, SOC Team Lead at Redscan. “However, with cyber security risks being greater than ever and remote workers lacking office protections, it's important to maintain a high, if not higher standard, security awareness. If you're a home worker, security protocols should include locking your workstation whilst away from your desk”. 

It is the case that many workers are happy to take everything very seriously at the office, setting a strong password and following procedures closely. However, it isn't always the same story when working remotely.

Your staff are a crucial line of defence; it can be disastrous if they aren't following good security practices. 

Impact of VPNs on Remote Work Security

The role of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in remote work security is significant. VPNs encrypt all internet traffic, making intercepting data more challenging for cybercriminals.

They add an extra layer of privacy, ensuring that sensitive company information remains secure when employees connect through potentially unsecured home networks.

VPNs help protect against unauthorized access and data interception by masking IP addresses and encrypting communications, offering a simple yet efficient security measure for remote workers.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

It is also the case that flexible working encourages using a more significant number of personal devices. Nothing has to be wrong with this, but it opens the company to a broader attack area for cybercriminals. 

Once again, the problem is that staff don't always understand the importance of following procedures and doing precisely what they are told to do. It is crucial from a security perspective, but it seems to impact their day-to-day working life a little. This is why it can be challenging to remember. 

Endpoint security solutions are essential for managing more personal devices accessing company resources. These solutions offer advanced threat detection, real-time monitoring, and comprehensive device management.

Organisations can prevent unauthorised access and safeguard sensitive data by proactively identifying and addressing potential security issues on individual devices. Reliable endpoint security measures can greatly reduce the risk of cyberattacks in flexible working environments.

Missing office protections

Flexible working will generally involve staff working outside of the office. Once again, this can have potential cost-saving benefits for the company and help staff avoid long commutes, so it has been well received as a concept.

However, working in the office provides a range of cybersecurity provisions that make staff safer.

Working at home means relying on their private cybersecurity measures, which are not always up to the same level as those in the office. What is worse is that companies have never been in a worse position to change the kinds of cybersecurity they offer.

There is a shortage of qualified and experienced cybersecurity professionals. This makes bringing expertise into your business that might mitigate some of these issues extremely difficult. 

Zero Trust Security Model

The zero-trust security model is gaining traction as a powerful strategy to protect business networks. This approach operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify,” requiring continuous verification of user identity and device status.

By implementing zero trust, companies can enhance their defences against breaches by ensuring that only authenticated users can access sensitive information. This method significantly mitigates risks associated with remote work environments, where traditional security perimeters are often insufficient.

Complicating password management?

Passwords are an essential part of cybersecurity. Statistics show that 80% of data breaches can be traced to weak or reused passwords. However, it is possible that flexible working makes passwords weaker and puts the system at greater risk of attack.

If a staff member has to remember a password to be used on multiple machines, they might ignore robust password protocols and opt for one that is easy to remember instead. Unfortunately, this leaves the business open to cracked passwords and cybercriminals entering the system without anyone's knowledge. 

Tips for improving security with flexible working patterns

• Multi-factor authentication – also known as MFA, is an elementary form of cybersecurity that can be very effective. The concept here is that instead of relying on a single form of authentication (such as a password), it will only grant access with multiple forms of authentication. Options could include fingerprint scanning, memorable phrases, or access codes sent to other devices. 
• Regular training – training is a crucial part of cybersecurity that is often overlooked. You should regularly provide staff with high-quality training and keep up to date to help staff understand the most current threats.
• Having an incident plan in place – one of the fundamental problems for remote workers is not knowing what to do when they discover something has gone wrong. In many cases, things are made worse by staff not acting as they should. To counteract this, you should have an incident response plan so everyone knows what to do during a cyberattack.