What is Hybrid Working? Understanding Its Cyber Risks

11 March 2025

The shift towards hybrid working has transformed workplace dynamics, offering employees greater flexibility while ensuring business operations remain efficient. This evolving model enables organisations to maintain productivity without compromising essential cybersecurity measures. As businesses adapt to this approach, securing digital assets becomes a top priority to support a seamless transition.

Hybrid working blends remote and office-based work, allowing employees to collaborate effectively while reducing commuting time. This distributed work structure enhances efficiency, fostering a balanced environment where flexibility and productivity go hand in hand.

Hybrid Remote: What does It Mean?

Various organisations embrace hybrid remote working models due to the increase in flexible work environments. The meaning of hybrid remote has yet to be clearly defined.  

What is Hybrid Remote?  

The hybrid remote work model integrates remote work advantages into conventional office attendance practices. This work approach enables staff members to achieve personal-workplace harmony while maintaining both effectiveness and team collaboration.

Under hybrid remote work structures, employees dedicate part of their time to working from home while also performing duties at their workplace. Workers benefit from flexibility through this approach, though they can maintain in-person collaboration according to their needs. For those wondering, what does hybrid remote mean, it refers to a work model that blends remote and on-site work, allowing employees to balance flexibility with team engagement.

What does Hybrid Remote Working Mean?  

Hybrid remote working involves placing individuals between working remotely and working from the office. The work schedule for employees combines timed segments of office presence with variable remote work days either by predetermined corporate rules or business necessity.  

Cybersecurity Challenges of Hybrid Working

The rise of hybrid workplaces has introduced several vulnerabilities, increasing the risk of cyber threats. Below are the key security concerns:

1. Personal Device Usage

Employees often use their personal laptops, tablets and smartphones to access the company data, which do not support enterprise-grade security features. It thereby increases correlation to dark web threats such as credential theft and unauthorised access.

2. Unsecured Networks

Home Wi-Fi or public networks are common ways remote employees utilise, and none of them have robust security. They can also steal and unleash sensitive business information by interfering with data transmissions.

3. Rise in Phishing Attacks

Phishing emails take advantage of the distributed workforce by sending emails to employees with malicious messages attempting to steal credentials or infect users with malware.

4. Vulnerabilities in Third-Party Applications

It also increases the risks brought by increased dependence on collaboration tools (e.g., video conferencing, cloud storage). These are potential entry points if these applications are not kept updated or secured.

Research shows that around 1 in 4 SMEs are worried about how to secure the remote working environment for remote employees.

How a Hybrid Work Model Can Reduce Cyber Risks

1. Clear Security Policies

Guidelines should be defined around exactly what the organisation can and cannot access, where the data can be stored, and how the device can be accessed. Safeguarding the organisation’s cybersecurity hygiene is very important, and the employees need to understand that.

2. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

VPN have become a mandated practice to take in encrypted data transmissions, which means that there is no opportunity of being eavesdropped upon or having unauthorised access.

However, remote desktop it support software can provide operations with any streamlined methods, enabling staff to securely connect to company systems from anywhere. Fortunately, some of the security lessons learned by these businesses can be implemented to maintain security, albeit for flexibility, by utilizing multi-factor authentication (MFA), virtual private networks (VPNs), and endpoint protection.

3. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

MFA increases security as it requires multiple verification methods to reduce the risk of unauthorised access.

4. Cybersecurity Awareness Training

Cultivating awareness among employees in an organisation for dark web monitoring and phishing detection becomes an important step in building the organisation’s cyber defence. Professional IT security services allow businesses to monitor potential breaches through constant monitoring of potential breaches or threats.

The Role of IT Support in Hybrid Work Environments

The increasing adoption of hybrid working by businesses makes dealing with cyber threats a necessity for IT support. Companies can choose between:

• Onsite IT Support for direct troubleshooting and infrastructure management.
• Remote IT Support for quicker response times and flexible assistance.

Conclusion

On the one side, transferring to a hybrid working mode brings plenty of advantages, and on the other side, it challenges cybersecurity. In an operational sense, businesses must think of and innovate within a constant state of evolution. They need to act actively to put in place security measures and ensure staff have received training on how to use the resources they’re given; they must practice dark web monitoring.