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14/08/2026 6:38 pm
TL;DR: Hybrid work has pushed privileged access outside the traditional perimeter, making insider risk, compromised contractor accounts, and remote-device hygiene central PAM concerns, according to Arcon. The security model now depends on continuous verification, contextual session control, and auditable privileged access rather than location-based trust.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Arcon: hybrid work, insider risk, and PAM controls for remote access
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern access from unmanaged endpoints?
A: Security teams should treat unmanaged endpoints as conditional trust zones, not normal access paths.
Q: Why does hybrid work increase the risk of privileged account abuse?
A: Hybrid work increases risk because trust is no longer anchored to a controlled office network.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about remote insider risk?
A: They often focus on user behaviour alone and miss the control-plane problem.
Practitioner guidance
- Bind privileged access to device posture and session context Require phishing-resistant MFA, healthy-device checks, and contextual step-up before any privileged action from non-office networks or unmanaged endpoints.
- Replace standing admin rights with just-in-time elevation Broker privileged sessions through approval-gated JIT access, auto-expiry, and reason codes so elevated privilege exists only for the task being performed.
- Record and review privileged sessions end to end Enable command-level session monitoring, playback, and tamper-evident logs for SSH, RDP, cloud consoles, and sensitive browser sessions so investigations can reconstruct actions, not just authentications.
What's in the full article
Arcon's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step examples of how remote compromise, MFA fatigue, and browser-synced credentials turn into enterprise access problems.
- Specific PAM controls for travel mode, session recording, and contextual access brokering across SSH, RDP, and cloud consoles.
- Implementation detail for discovery and access-path mapping to surface shadow admins and over-privileged pathways.
- Operational guidance on DLP, clipboard restrictions, and credential export controls for roaming users.
👉 Read Arcon's analysis of hybrid work, insider risk, and PAM controls →
Hybrid access and insider risk: are PAM controls keeping up?
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14/08/2026 6:44 pm
Static trust is the governance failure hybrid work exposed. Identity programmes were built on the assumption that privileged access would originate from controlled corporate environments. That assumption fails when the same session can begin in a home office, on a personal laptop, or over an untrusted network. The implication is that location-based trust no longer describes the real risk model, so governance must move to context-aware access decisions.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 98% of companies plan to deploy even more AI agents within the next 12 months, despite documented rogue behaviour in 80% of current deployments, according to AI Agents: The New Attack Surface report.
- Only 52% of companies can track and audit the data their AI agents access, leaving 48% with a complete compliance and investigation blind spot.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do organisations know if PAM is actually working?
A: PAM is working when elevated access is temporary, sessions are observable, and revoked rights do not reappear outside approved workflows. If admin activity remains hard to attribute, if credentials persist after use, or if privileged accounts are missing from inventory, the control is only partial.
👉 Read our full editorial: Hybrid work expands privileged access risk beyond the perimeter
