Hybrid work security gaps are outpacing workplace flexibility

At a glance

What this is: This is GlobalSign’s analysis of hybrid work and the security risks created by distributed employees, home networks, and heavier reliance on remote communication channels.

Why it matters: It matters because hybrid work changes how identity, authentication, and communications are trusted, which directly affects IAM, phishing resistance, and the protection of corporate access paths.

By the numbers:

• 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing a critical gap in remediation procedures.
• 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
• 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage.

👉 Read GlobalSign's analysis of hybrid work security risks and remote access controls

Context

Hybrid work is not just a workplace model. It is an access model that widens the number of devices, networks, and communication paths involved in routine business activity. That creates a larger trust surface for identity verification, phishing resistance, encryption, and device assurance, especially when employees move between office, home, and shared spaces.

The article’s core point is that flexible work changes security assumptions faster than many control programmes can adapt. For IAM teams, the practical issue is not whether people work remotely or on-site, but whether authentication, email security, and access governance still hold when work is no longer anchored to a fixed office perimeter.

Key questions

Q: How should security teams handle trust when employees work from home and the office?

A: Security teams should stop using workplace location as a primary trust signal and instead rely on multifactor authentication, device posture, and session-level verification. Hybrid work increases the number of networks and devices in play, so access decisions must follow the user and the context, not the desk they happen to sit at.

Q: Why do hybrid work models increase phishing risk?

A: Hybrid work pushes more communication into email, chat, and messaging tools, where impersonation is easy and verification is often weak. Attackers benefit when staff are moving quickly and informal checks disappear. Strong email signing, user verification workflows, and out-of-band confirmation reduce that exposure.

Q: What breaks when security policies still assume a fixed office perimeter?

A: Policies built around a fixed perimeter fail when users connect from home routers, shared networks, and mobile devices. In that environment, perimeter controls see too little and trust too much. Organisations need identity-centric controls that evaluate authentication strength, device state, and session risk continuously.

Q: Who is accountable when remote access authentication fails?

A: Accountability sits with the identity, access, and system owners jointly, because the failure spans authentication design, access path governance, and detection coverage. In regulated environments, leaders should be able to show who approved exceptions, who reviewed risk, and who owns the control outcome.

Technical breakdown

Why hybrid work weakens the traditional trust boundary

A hybrid workplace dissolves the fixed perimeter that older security models relied on. Employees now authenticate from home routers, public networks, coworking spaces, and personal devices, which increases the number of points where credentials can be intercepted, sessions can be hijacked, or users can be socially engineered. The trust decision moves away from the office network and toward identity proofing, device posture, and session control. That is why the hybrid model is not only an HR or facilities change, but also an identity governance problem.

Practical implication: security teams should treat location as an unreliable trust signal and shift access decisions toward stronger identity and device assurance.

Phishing risk rises when work moves into email and messaging channels

Hybrid work pushes more collaboration into email, chat, and social platforms, which are the channels attackers most often use for impersonation and malicious links. The technical weakness is not simply user error. It is the combination of faster communication, reduced informal verification, and more fragmented oversight over who is speaking to whom. In practice, phishing succeeds when identity signals are weak and message authenticity is not enforced with modern controls such as email signing, multifactor authentication, and user verification workflows.

Practical implication: teams should harden message authenticity and user verification before relying on employee awareness alone.

Encryption and identity controls must scale together in distributed work

As corporate traffic leaves controlled office networks, encryption becomes essential, but encryption alone does not solve trust. Traffic can be encrypted while still carrying malicious payloads, stolen credentials, or fraudulent requests. The real control problem is pairing secure transport with identity-centric verification, so that messages, sessions, and users are authenticated consistently across channels. This is where IAM, PKI, and secrets governance intersect: access paths need cryptographic trust, but also lifecycle control and revocation discipline.

Practical implication: organisations should align PKI, MFA, and access revocation processes so that protected traffic also remains identity-aware.

Threat narrative

Attacker objective: The attacker wants to turn a distributed workforce into a lower-friction path into corporate accounts, data, and communication channels.

1. Entry occurs when attackers exploit home-network exposure, weak WiFi security, or a malicious email or messaging link that reaches a remote worker outside office protections.
2. Escalation follows when stolen credentials, impersonation, or unsafe device access lets the attacker move from a single user interaction to broader corporate access.
3. Impact appears when the attacker uses that trusted access to compromise data, spread phishing further, or disrupt business communications across the hybrid environment.

NHI Mgmt Group analysis

Hybrid work has become an identity assurance problem, not just a network-security problem. The article correctly frames the risk as more than remote access. Once users, devices, and approvals move across multiple locations, trust must be re-established continuously instead of being inherited from a corporate perimeter. For IAM programmes, this means stronger authentication, device confidence, and session governance become core controls rather than add-ons.

Verification trust gap: hybrid operating models amplify the distance between a request and a reliable trust signal. Email, chat, and remote meetings compress decision time, which gives attackers more room to exploit weak verification habits. That makes the boundary between identity and fraud sharper, especially where employees approve requests without strong out-of-band confirmation. Practitioners should treat every remote interaction as a potential trust decision.

PKI and MFA only reduce risk when they are tied to lifecycle control. GlobalSign’s discussion of public key infrastructure, multifactor authentication, email security, and digital signatures maps to a broader governance point: secure transport is not enough if identities, keys, and certificates are poorly managed. Hybrid work raises the value of cryptographic trust, but it also increases the consequences of stale or unmanaged credentials. The practitioner conclusion is that trust infrastructure must be governed like identity infrastructure.

Hybrid work exposes the weakness of office-centric control assumptions. Many programmes still measure security by where work happens, even though the real question is how access is validated and revoked across changing contexts. That shift aligns with NIST Cybersecurity Framework thinking on identity, authentication, and protective controls, and it should push teams to reevaluate office-bound policies. The right response is to govern access by assurance, not by workplace location.

Workplace flexibility is now an access design issue for the whole enterprise. Once employees can work anywhere, collaboration tooling, authentication, and communication integrity all become part of the same governance surface. That makes hybrid work a practical stress test for IAM, fraud prevention, and security awareness programmes. The takeaway for practitioners is simple: if the trust model does not survive movement between home, office, and third-party spaces, the work model is outpacing the control model.

What this signals

Verification trust gap: hybrid working makes assurance signals more important than physical location, which means IAM programmes should tighten authentication, device confidence, and session controls together rather than in isolation. When users can move freely between networks, the control model has to move with them.

The next programme risk is not just more phishing. It is more fragmented trust, where collaboration tools, email, and remote access each carry different verification standards. Teams should prepare for identity and communications controls to be assessed together, especially where access decisions have downstream business impact.

For practitioners

• Strengthen remote identity verification Require multifactor authentication, device posture checks, and stronger user verification for access from unmanaged or home networks before sensitive systems are reachable.
• Harden phishing-resistant communications Use digitally signed email, enforce secure messaging policies, and train staff to validate high-risk requests through a second channel before acting.
• Review trust assumptions in hybrid access policies Reassess whether office location is still being treated as a security signal and replace it with assurance-based access decisions that follow the user and the session.
• Align PKI with identity lifecycle controls Track certificate issuance, renewal, and revocation alongside account lifecycle events so that cryptographic trust does not outlive the identity behind it.
• Reduce exposure from shared and personal environments Set clearer rules for remote work on unsecured WiFi, personal endpoints, and shared spaces, and reserve the highest-risk workflows for controlled devices and verified connections.

Key takeaways

• Hybrid work changes the trust model, because identity assurance now matters more than office location.
• Remote communication channels expand phishing exposure, so message authenticity and verification workflows become core controls.
• Access governance must cover PKI, MFA, and lifecycle revocation together, or secure transport will not translate into secure trust.

Key terms

• Hybrid Work Security: Hybrid work security is the set of controls used to protect people, devices, data, and communications when employees work across office, home, and third-party environments. It relies on identity assurance, device confidence, secure communications, and revocation discipline rather than a fixed network perimeter.
• Verification Trust Gap: A verification trust gap is the distance between a request and a trustworthy way to confirm it. It appears when staff must make access or payment decisions across chat, email, or remote meetings without strong out-of-band checks, making impersonation and social engineering more effective.
• Public Key Infrastructure: Public key infrastructure is the system used to issue, manage, and validate digital certificates and cryptographic trust. In hybrid environments, it supports email security, signing, authentication, and encrypted communications, but it only remains effective when certificate lifecycle management and revocation are tightly governed.
• Identity-Driven Access Control: A governance approach that makes identity the basis for who can reach systems, data and industrial assets. It matters in converged environments because consistent identity policy is one of the few controls that can span enterprise applications, OT systems and third-party support paths.

What's in the full article

GlobalSign's full article covers the practical detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• How the vendor frames multi-factor authentication, mobile authentication, and digital signatures for hybrid and remote workers.
• The specific security and communication controls it recommends for reducing phishing exposure in distributed teams.
• The article's workplace and employee-support angle, including how hybrid working changes office expectations and team structure.
• The vendor's own discussion of public key infrastructure as part of a remote-work security stack.

👉 GlobalSign's full article covers remote-work risk, phishing exposure, and the security controls it recommends.

Deepen your knowledge

NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme, covers NHI governance, identity lifecycle, and secrets management for practitioners who need to connect access control to operational reality. It gives security and identity teams a shared baseline for governing trust in distributed environments.