remote workforce

Your employees left the office network years ago. They open company data on home WiFi, sync it to personal phones, and connect through VPNs that attackers now probe first. The perimeter you used to defend moved into hundreds of living rooms.

That shift changed where breaches start. Exploitation of vulnerabilities was the initial access vector in 20% of breaches last year, a 34% jump, with attackers focusing on VPNs and perimeter devices, according to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report. The unpatched router and the always-on VPN are no longer edge cases.

Below, we break down the real risks of distributed work, the home-network and device habits that close them, and the exercises that turn those habits into reflex.

Your employees stopped working from secure office networks a long time ago. They access company data from smartphones on public WiFi, tablets at coffee shops, and laptops in home offices. That shift expanded your attack surface in ways most security training programs still haven’t caught up with.

Attackers noticed before you did. Mobile-specific attacks like smishing (SMS phishing) have increased over 300% in recent years, according to Proofpoint’s 2023 State of the Phish report. The same employee who carefully evaluates every email on their work computer will tap a malicious link on their phone without a second thought. That gap between desktop caution and mobile carelessness is where breaches happen.