It’s a simple story. People at home, fewer checks, more doors and therefore more crime. But the reality is not so transparent. Remote work increases the risk in certain areas, but rarely leads to security breaches.
When digging deeper, most serious incidents reveal a combination of long-standing deficiencies. Exposed credentials, weak third-party controls, misconfigured cloud services and outdated infrastructure, and yes, human error that is easier to exploit due to remote configurations.
For business leaders, the focus should not be on blaming telecommuting. Instead, hybrid work should be seen as one of many risk multipliers that require specific, measurable solutions.
Industry reports show recurring trends
Take a look at the real cause of this year’s major accidents. Research and industry reports show recurring trends.
Ransomware authors exploited stolen credentials, unpatched interfaces, and misconfigured remote access. Supply chain vulnerabilities and third-party compromise caused major operational disruptions, and simple phishing remained the primary target.
These are not new operators at all. These are well-known problems that become even more damaging when they occur in an environment where people, services and suppliers are dispersed.
The rough list of the most serious breaches that will occur in 2025 highlights the diversity of underlying causes and how often attackers have combined multiple vulnerabilities to increase access.
Remote work has changed the risk
Remote work has changed the risk topology. Home routers, personal devices and shadow IT create a greater “edge” for defenders to monitor.
Meanwhile, many companies accelerated cloud migration and rapidly implemented SaaS applications during and after the pandemic, often without adequate governance.
This discrepancy leads to a configuration deviation. A cloud service configured for a small pilot goes into production, the credentials grow and fewer people understand the entire attack surface.
Data loss and lateral movement scenarios are more complicated when identities and permissions are not applied consistently across on-premises and cloud systems. Analysis of industrial breaches in 2025 has revealed misconfigurations and identity theft as the main culprits.
But don’t assume that every telecommuter is the weak link. In several high-profile cases this year, attackers exploited vulnerabilities in vendor systems, legacy local services and industrial control interfaces that had little to do with what employees had access to.
In short, telecommuting is a factor and not a single point of failure. Looking at history as a whole, this will lead to boards not spending enough money on optics rather than long-term controls.
This year, the companies found that companies focusing on identity management, least privilege, auditability and vendor risk management had limited reach, even within large, isolated populations.
What should business leaders do now?
Start with four priorities that address the risks of remote work while closing major security gaps:
1. Make identity the control level. We assume that all connections can be hostile. Enforce least privilege, mandatory multifactor authentication, session control, and fast credential revocation. Identity checks reduce the value of stolen credentials, whether an employee is in the office or on the couch.
2. Prevent risks related to third parties. Treat suppliers and partners as part of the extended network. Enforce minimum security policies, require incident logs and manuals, and conduct ongoing audits. Many major outages in 2025 were due to compromises with suppliers, rather than a single mistake by remote workers.
3. Correct the configuration discrepancy. Automate health checks for cloud and remote access tools. A minor configuration error caused the problem to spiral from a manageable problem to a complete outage when attackers linked it to identity theft.
4. Measure what matters. Move beyond debates about “remote work” and instrumental metrics. Recall time, percentage of critical systems behind MFA, vendor compliance score, and average detection time. The measures ensure disciplined spending on safety and faster accident management.
Finally, if you’re appearing on a panel, don’t limit your resistance to the question, “Is remote work causing this problem?” Telecommuting is not a single cause; This simply brings a number of challenges in terms of people, processes and technology.
Rather, let’s talk about resilience in systemic terms. How the company manages risk, monitors processes, trains employees and uses tools to mitigate threats. It’s about looking at the whole and not pointing the finger at remote work itself.
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